Warlords of Draenor Talent Calculator

Comments

Comment by coolios15

So death knights are getting Lich king abilities? I can has fury of frostmourne and 1 shot any 20Mythic boss plz?

Comment by keyallash

No longer need frost strike for dumping RP...

Comment by Rhaelos

DK's are the new Lich King.

Comment by Iceddeathknight

I absolutely love the Defile and Necrotic Plague abilities. I just would like to know if Defile has a max Area or not tho.Necrotic Plague reminds me slightly of the old unholy ability from WotLK also. Breath of Sindragosa would be nice for Frost DKs to use for their RP dump in AoE situations.

Comment by WTBaggrodump

Oh. My. Cairne Bloodhoof.

Defile on Death Knights. I'm not sure I can raid with one who's picked the Defile talent. I'll be reminded of one too many wipes on the Lich King in ICC...

Comment by ArceusRoolz

Wow.... looks amazing. My DK might start being my main rather than my Hunter.... I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'D PICK!

Comment by mshrod

DK's are pretty awesome!

Comment by Lindriel

My Dk will be The Next Lich King After Bolvar '-' i Loved That Talents *___*

Comment by casper5632

I dont understand how you are all so excited. I had to deal with my last talents in MoP being all utility, and now ill need to deal with all my last talents in WoD being dps. Pallys Druids and Monks have talents that actually benefit their survivability. These talents just give me the impression that blizzard thinks DKs are finished. DK tanks are unchanged since cata and require the same constant improving that the other tanks seem to getting every expansion.

Comment by Arcagelos

Necroting Plague can not be spread by Pestilence, but will refresh it? and will the Weakened Blows still apply?

Comment by deathclaws1177

finally blizzard is making up for the level 90 talents, they all sound awesome, cant wait to try them out!

Comment by Aelewynn

gah this is going to make it almost impossible for me to choose which talents i want the most!

Comment by sihar

Pretty cool talents for dps, and defile is going to be awesome, though it may not be great for tanking as it will end up grabbing more mobs than desired...

Comment by Eramoar

First of all; They are all DPS talents but lets say this. How much they imrove our DPS since they all replace something.Second is i don't know if Blizzard forgot but DKs are also TANK. Defile is unnecessary since we use D&D for Aoe pulls mostly, we don't need a slowly growing AoE. Well actually all are good but please find something to boost survival a bit. İ have no issues about my survival but that is not the case for many Blood DKs here. AND NOT FAİR ! ty

Comment by malvolio

Loving the continuing flavor of keeping death knights in line with the Lich King lore. The decision to replace "old" attacks with the new ones derived from the talents is interesting, I wonder how Necrotic Plague works with Rolling Blood.

Comment by xPozar

Necrotic plague is the new corrupted blood >:D

Comment by jaquesery

I think the breath of sindragosa would be good for a fight when you can use AMS and just spam it and get so much dps out from it while the AMS is still up

Comment by Backstabmacro

I think I might need to dust off my poor level 80 Death Knight.

Necrotic Plague for Unholy! I hope so, that sounds so much fun. The best part, though?

Throw down a Defile and scream at the raid over TeamSpeak to get the flying %#$@ out of it.

Comment by Nados

I have a feeling Necrotic Plague and Defile will be too OP... drop one of those in Orgrimmar and watch everyone die.

Comment by sapssey

the idea to bring lich king abilities to deathknights is great.It will be more interesting to play them tough I do believe defile will be a bit too powerful in raids.

Comment by Deathegg

I hope Breath of Sindragosa is as awesome as it sounds. Just imagining the animation possibilities will lull me into a blissful sleep tonight. So tired of counting sheep.......

Comment by drewmeister11

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Defile in Alterac Valley! DK's are all going to be sitting on defense now...

Comment by Nix157

These new talents look super cool i can't wait to use them in game and RP as the LK

Comment by yalasen

These talents are extremely AoE intensive, and thematically very pleasing. Breath of Sindragosa will be an amazing Runic Power Burn, Nectroic plague will give fantastic sustained AoE/Single Target Damage (Think Nazgrim) and defile will give Death Knights a great way to define their territory in pvp, and a neat AOE damage spell for tanking a boss and adds!

Overall a wonderful set of ideas :)

Comment by SirCon89roe

Cant wait to be lichking woot

Comment by miniwidge

Ever since I fought Lich King and he had that necrotic plague going (or at least the adds did), I wanted it. Now it 's here, or will be once the XP hits. Bwah hahahahaha... I feel very Death Knighty right now.

Comment by Strife100

We need more abilities for classes from 91 to 100 not just 4 or 5 and not all should be passive llike with the rogue slice and dice add more stuff please

Comment by Saurisa

I am really excited about Necrotic Plague. The other two level 100 choices seem so insignificant in comparision.

Comment by Abernatheeee

Hahaha yesss. I am loving the new talents.

Comment by CharlieNoOne

The new DK talents look bad ass, but I wonder if they will change them before release. :/

Comment by Ticklebutt

DEFILE! Omg, thank you, Blizzard.

Comment by Barsky

Defile AND Necrotic Plague are player abilities now? I have a sudden urge to run a lot of AoE-heavy encounters...

Comment by Leviatharan

Wait. If Defile and Necrotic Plague are in the same tier, does that mean Arthas cheats and respecs mid-fight?

Comment by Ralan

Have a feeling that Necrotic Plague will cause issues on certain fights since it replaces Blood Plague, and if it jumps you'll be doing less damage to the boss unless you can have multiple up. This could be especially crippling to Unholy during multi-enemy fights but a massive boon on single target "Patchwerk" fights since it can't jump and would only get stronger.

Comment by bitemygold

I'm quite torn on the Death Knight level 100 talents. They all sound awesome, but the fact that Necrotic Plague replaces Blood Plague, Defile replaces Death and Decay and Breath of Sindragosa eats up 15RP +15RP per second without interacting with any rune regeneration benefits kind of bites.

From what I can tell, Necrotic Plague as it currently is will be a good passive for fights which involve a lot of closely stacked, drawn out AoE.

Defile on the other hand, will be good for spread out, quick AoE. Unfortunately (and like Necrotic Plague), it will take a while to build up to it's full damage potential.

And finally, there is Breath of Sindragosa. I like that it is a new ability entirely, instead of replacing an existing ability. However, the fact that it has a cool down AND consumes runic power continuously is rather discouraging. I would ask that this ability at least interact with the level 75 talents, or provide some other rune regeneration benefit while it is active.

At this time, it looks like Breath of Sindragosa will be the top dps preference since you will be able to spread diseases (including Blood Plague), cast Death and Decay and use Breath of Sindragosa at the same time, all while continuing your standard AoE rotation. We'll have to wait and see if any more changes are made to know for sure.

Comment by Leviatharan

Also should point out, the current icon for Necrotic Plague is actually "spell_shadow_creepingplague", as confirmed in this screenshot from Blizzcon.

Comment by Jasireth

The new talents look good pity that they didn't really add one for blood dks though

Comment by slayerr18

Get ready for massive Aoe Raid Encounters!

Comment by JoeAlder

What we all are wondering about tank-oriented Necrotic Plague is:

Will it be affected by , getting refreshed with every Blood Boil?

Will it still apply Weakened Blows?

Will it "jump" to another target, as in leaving the original target and reapplying to a nearby one with an additional stack? Or will it spread, giving an additional stack to the original target and then copying that same stack number to another one (or something like that)?

If it tries to jump to an already infected target, will it even be eligible? If so, will the incoming stacks add to the existing ones?

Will there be a limit to the amount of stacks per target?

A new application of Plague Strike or Outbreak will refresh its duration, but will it reset the stacks to 1 or will it maintain them?

Will Plague Leech consume every stack on the target or just one?

Comment by Killerstorm

Oh thank you Blizzard for sending us these knew DK moves. wish we could have all 3. I remember the good old Defile. Ahh. So many people died when they never listened. I want that just for the show of it. I hope it works the same way as the Lich King used it.

Comment by arriebollie

My lvl 100 talent for dk will be breath of sindragosa, it looks awsome :D and it looks like 1 of the talents wich Arthas usses in Heroes of the Storm.

Comment by bmworkman314

Can enemies get an achievement for killing me with a certain amount of Necrotic Plague?

Comment by Conser

I have so say that I would grab necrotic plague and unholy blight. Just activate unholy blight and run through a group of enemies.

Comment by xmass56

Looks like my dk's going to be having some fun. These new talents are awesome.

Comment by BlkDragonPrince

While these new talents look great I m sure they will be changed and balanced from what we see now. However in my eyes isn't that the reason we rolled DK's so we want to feel like the Lich King. Adding these new spells I think does a good job in that designed feel of power like an DK should feel. The should make you feel like your one of the more powerful death knights that were known to be in the Lich King's army and they do just that. Most of these will be tweaked and redone or even removed as the development cycle on Warlords presses on. Overall I think we all can be excited for new talents no matter what class we play.

Comment by Rahwk

Oohh %^&*, that looks like an amazing set of lvl 100 talents! Can't wait to try em all out.

Comment by SweetieBot

Dat Necrotic Plague for DKs. Excited for that! Defile looks good too.

Comment by Chaosrex

It is indeed interesting.

WOuld liked to see something like the Old Raise Ghoul spell, the one you raised has a Ghoul once you died for a few minutes, liked that one back in the day

Comment by DrPhase

They all look like awesome spells but they're also in need of some rework/tweaking.

Necrotic Plague with have to be doing a lot of additional damage to compete with the reliable output of Blood Plague, else it would just gimp our damage completely if it isn't executed in a ideal environment.

Defile looks incredibly awesome if it wouldn't be for its extremely short duration, not to mention that the target(s) would have to be stationary for it to even be moderately more useful than Death and Decay. Currently you can't even keep a target in your Death and Decay for more than a few seconds even with the 30% snare Glyph or using Chains of Ice, a duration increased by an additional 10 sec would make this talent choice amazing but not too powerful.

Breath of Sindragosa is an awesome idea but the fact that it has such a long cooldown for being an extremely high cost spell makes the spell almost unusable especially for Unholy DK's that would benefit more from just Death Coiling away as per usual for Super Timmy. The cooldown should be either lowered to around 20 sec or removed with such a high Runic Power cost. It all depends on the numbers that we'll see once WoD goes into Beta/Live.

Comment by Death087

There must always be a Lich King? No...there will be MANY Lich Kings and Queens! LOVE the LK-like abilities! <3 ^_^ <3 They all look SO cool: Breath of Sindragosa might be my less-used one, though (I don't like any RP-dump except Rune Strike :P). And I am one of the many interested to see how Defile's area-increase and Necrotic Plague - and the Weakened Blows debuff - will work.

Comment by johnnyc

Comment by Srarawts

Comment by Hanatos

The Death Knights says: WE...ARE... THE LICH KING.

Comment by Starcrusher

gief Corpse Explosion plx. Best DK ability ever

Comment by SacredFear

I'm rather pleased with the new talents.

The only thing I have to say about them is Defile looks more like it has more Dungeon use rather than Raid use. Necrotic Plague looks like it will have more Raid use then Dungeon use. But that's just me.

Comment by Srarawts

That Erotic Plague looks really nice. I'm taking that $#!T, period!

Comment by Wirxaw

Not sure why are Blood DKs so fussed about Necrotic Plague and debuff. Right now you can handle anything with mere click of Blood Boil, which is roughly 3rd most active spell in your rotation, let alone procs from passive. If you choose Plague Leech for 2 runes... you have to be ready for activation\monitoring and spending runes on manual pestilence, which requires you to select target with diseases to make them be spread. Perhaps some Ra-den'ish single target fights could force you to switch and micro it(hell, if it was even used for 1 rune), but most of the time I don't see the need to dump Roiling Blood, which also refreshes your DoT duration, saving reapplication during Outbreak's CD.

If I had a say about Necrotic Plague - I'd give it to Frost baseline. Yes, not Unholy. The need to pop a rune every now and then, being forced into Plague Leech(wasting double GCD per reapplication) or Unholy Blight\Mushrooms - is annoying. Blood and UH have their ways to maintain both debuffs, frost has to reapply one. With Frost Fever being HBlasted and Blood Plague being almost permanent as Necrotic Plague(at least for AoE) - Frost can be much more tolerable.While it's not stated(at this time) what damage does it deal, I suppose it's something based on shadow, perhaps dual-damage. This may suggest becoming baseline for Unholy, but I don't play UH, so can't say how much it will be better than their own plague.

Defile looks really sexy for Bloods. Stronger, cooler... Since Blood has no problems with spreading diseases and by no means will a sane BDK waste RP for Breath(unless it will be given a chance to restore runes or something), Defile seems like a tunnel. However, there is always an issue of CC. If Defile will grow even half as big as the parent ability could... Well, kiss goodbye to CC. Possibly controllable, but if that ever becomes an issue - it raises the question: why would a Blood need more AoE, when threat is(as of now) not an issue? Perhaps even Necrotic Plague would be more fitting. A possible adjusted single-DoT fast aoe with Necrotic, and using Plague Leech on CD for runes.

As stated above, and not just by me, Breath of Sindragosa looks laughable without rune return. It simply makes it unusable for Blood(even AoE nuke farming build would possibly favor Defile\NP more), and other specs could use... rune management in active combat. I doubt that these numbers(2000 per second currently) will be HIGH enough to justify loss of rune regen. At least Frost is pretty certain to provide some decent continuous damage with HB and rune management.Perhaps unholy could use Breath, since it's not that hard to get RP for unholy, the whole rotation for AoE is spread dots and Blood Boil. Maybe instead of weaker Blood Boil(compared to HB), Unholy could save RP and lay waste with "Shadow"frost damage in one cast.

Comment by Terur

Where my best talants...

Maybe need something like this

Talent: Death keeper

For UnholyWandering Plague - When your diseases damage an enemy, there is a chance equal to your melee critical strike chance that the wil cause 33% additional damage to the target and all enemies within 8 yards. Ignores any target under the effect of a spell that is cancelled by taking damage.

Replaces Master of Ghouls, Shadow Infusion and Dark Transformation

For FrostHungering Cold 50 Runic power1.5 Sec sec cast

Purges the earth around the Death Knight of all heat. Enemies within 10 yards are trapped in ice, preventing them from performing any action for 10 sec and infecting them with Frost Fever. Enemies are considered Frozen, but any damage other than diseases will break the ice.

Cooldown 2 Min

For bloodBladed armor - PassiveWhenever your Blood Runes are on cooldown , you gain the Blade armor effect, which reflect 5% of taken damage and Increase Armor by 5% for the next 10 sec.

But it is only my own opinion.

Comment by BeefyMcGee

Now all we need is a Lich King transmog set.....

Comment by Navywater

wow... new powers! thats great!

Comment by bigkaboom34

Oh my lord. I hope we get some new LK-like spells as well, not just talents!

Comment by coolguyry

Comment by Rankkor

Here is my review/analysis of the new talents.

Gonna start with the easy one

Sindragosa's Breath:

This is by far the least effective/least useful talent of the whole bunch.

It consumes runic power. This represents a problem for frost DKs, a much bigger problem for blood Dks, and an even bigger problem for unholy, because a lot of our core mechanics hinge on RP usage. For Frost, they require spending RP on frost strike to trigger the talents in the lvl 75 tier, Blood TapRunic EmpowermentRunic Corruption. This talent so far doesn't interact with either of those, so while the initial burst of 4 howling blasts and this spell combined create a strong opening, you'll find yourself quickly rune-starved, and with that, also RP starved.

The problem is bigger for blood DKs, because they depend on the lvl 75 talents to regen runes for Death Strike, which is our number one active mitigation ability.

And the problem is even bigger for unholy DKs, because a big part of their mechanics and rotation is to use Death Coil, not only to proc the lvl 75 talents, but also to proc Shadow Infusion and Dark Transformation. By using this ability for some quick burst, they're negating a rather large part of their damage.

So unless this talent is reworked to interact with our other RP dumps, this is not really gonna be used that much except maybe for quick clearing trash on scenarios and 5mans, as well as daily quests. In an actual raid/boss fight or in pvp its much less useful.

Necrotic Plague:

Now this one is quite a mystery. There are SO MANY questions regarding this ability, and until we have some answers I gotta hold back my judgement of it.

can only one target be infected with it?

It says pestilence doesn't spread it, but what about other disease-spreading skills? such as Unholy Blight and

if you refresh the duration, will it reset the stacks?

is there a limit on how many stacks can it reach? is it something supremely high like 99 or something low like 10?

when it "jumps" does it leaves the current target, moves to another and gains a stack?

or when it "jumps" it simply puts a stack on its current target, and then infects a new target?

if the answer to question six is yes, when it infects a new target, will that target start at 1 stack? or with the current number of stacks equal to the number of jumps?

if the plague jumps back to a target that already is infected what happens? is the duration refreshed? does the target just gains 1 stack? or are the number of incoming stacks added up to the number of current stacks?

There are too many enigmas with this ability, so its impossible to tell how useful it will or will not be. I'm reserving my opinions of it until we know more.

Defile:

This is the current king of mambo when it comes to lvl 100 talents. Until we know more, this is by far the best choice. Unlike Sindragosa's Breath this one won't hinder your rotation or mechanics, and unlike Necrotic Plague, there are no unknown variables.

It deals damage every second for 10 seconds, each time it deals damage it grows in size and damage by 5% per target (with a cap of 15% increase per second) it has the same cooldown and cost as the spell it replaces, Death&Decay, and presumably it interacts with all the procs and glyphs that modify D&D. Not to mention its modeled after one of the most awesome raid abilities ever seen in the game.

The only question regarding it is if the damage and size increase is additive or multiplicative.

Usefulness by Spec

Blood has the short end of the stick, because not only none of these talents help in any way with damage mitigation, two of them actually hinder you. Sindragosa's Breath is just not viable for blood, due to how much we depend on using Runic Strike to regen runes for the Death Strikes which are a core part of our rotation. And Necrotic Plague, well, it depends on how its built but at the moment i'm assuming its not very useful either, due to the large number of unknown variables.

Defile is nice but it deals damage, which is not really the main purpose of a tank. Something similar is a problem for the warrior talents, no benefits for tank specs, while the druid/monk/paladin talents include bonuses that help with mitigation. Hopefully these talents will be greatly revised and expanded to include spec bonuses for blood as we go into beta, these are after all just previews.

Frost has it little better than blood, as two of these talents deal shadow damage, which is unaffected by Frost's mastery, and Sindragosa's Breath has that problem where its just more beneficial to spam Frost Strike and Howling Blast for AoE.

Unholy will DEFINITELY have a lot of reasons to foam at the mouth for Defile, and maybe even necrotic plague, so I'd say they hit the jackpot.

Comment by Sacrosterion

Breath of Sindragosa and Conversion sadden me. If you choose them as your talents, then you lose out on some of your level 75 talents. I think they're cool talents, but they cost more than what the tool tip says. You're also spending the runic power you would have got from the rune you could have got from level 75 talent.

I think that maybe BoSin could be a frost DnD replacement. Or heck, mash Defile and BoSin into one talent and come up with another. Clearly the main focus is AoE damage,

Necrotic plague could also be unique to each spec, with Unholy replacing frost fever and Frost replacing blood plague and doing frost. (or have it do shadowfrost)

Comment by Kataclysia

My Thoughts on the new Talents:

Necrotic Plague - I saw this and immediately my jaw dropped. This is a wonderful talent and will be picked by many players.

Defile - A very interesting Talent to say the least and I would definitely choose this on my Unholy Death Knight if it was not for Necrotic Plague.

Breathe of Sindragosa - Another potentially good choice for a death knight, but it is not as interesting to me as the others.

That being said I would personally choose Necrotic Plague no matter what spec I was it just looks that good.

Comment by theraafa

Warlocks are the new Deathwing.Warriors are all Nazgrim now.Death Knights are so Lich Kings.

What about others? Enlighten me.

Comment by KingdomKnight

There are too many questions surrounding Necrotic Plague. It has the potential to be way too powerful.Defile on the other hand sounds kind of weak. My guess would be that Necrotic Plague can only effect one target at a time and will have a limit to how high stacks can go. Even so, it has more potential than Defile. A shame since I would rather use Defile. We all know every other class will freak out and want DKs removed if we seem even remotely OP. And when we aren't then we're just bad.

Comment by Navariors

OMG Nice DK talents.

Comment by Navariors

OMG Nice DK talents.

Comment by Biomodel

Being that I've played a Dk since the beginning at high mmr, I'd like to throw out the idea of giving the class more utility / support to help build synergy between other classes. Currently we are locked to few 3v3 comps due to lack of support. Give Death Knights something to increase the skill cap and to benefit the arena comp / raid. Take some of our mongoloid damage away and replace it with something players will enjoy. Bring back a little bit of skill to this game, please!

Comment by NKahale

I really love these new talents. I love Necrotic Plague cause it provides another disease we for us that doesn't even need pestilence to spread its infection. I love Defile cause it provides another & better version of Death & Decay plus the bonus of damage & size it gets is a great addition to it. I also love both those spells cause they were both used by the Lich King himself & its always awesome getting the powers that previously belonged to our masters. Now & as for the 3rd talent: I love Sindragosa's Breath as well cause it provides the death knight with a spell similar to the warlock's demonic breath or the mage's dragon breath, with the bonus of being the death knight 2nd shadowfrost damage spell after death siphon. I also think its interesting that blizzard would create a death knight spell based on the Lich King's mount that he raised in the wrath cinematic. So therefore I really hope they keep all of them: Necrotic Plague & Defile cause their spells exclusively from the Lich King, & Sindragosa's Breath cause I would find it awesome to have a frontal cone AOE DK spell based on The Queen of the Frostbrood.

Comment by Reddes

Not basing any conclusions on visible numbers, merely how they stand against our current standards and my personal thoughts on how useful they are and what I would use. This is primarily from a DPS PoV for PvE.

Death Knights

Not that happy with how the new talents stand at this time. Frost PoV.P.S Blood got shafted as of this point.

Necrotic is ambiguous on how that would interact with Unholy Blight. It does say that Roiling wouldn't work as that triggers Pestilence which does say in that talent doesn't work.But what would UB do, would it overwrite everything with a one stack NP, rapidly stack it on all targets or would it just not work period?One interesting thing to note at least in the wording is that it does no elemental damage meaning at least at this point its not stronger in Unholy over Frost.

Defile is alright at best but it has favoritism in Unholy as things stands due to Mastery. They have to also make it pretty transparent else its old Desecrated Ground problem all over again.

Breath of Sindragosa as its stands is horrible. Its a continuous RP drain with a CD which is a big no no at least by how we function.We primarily dump runes then dump RP to get more runes to dump. Its why DKs don't run Conversion as its real detriment to damage.

What I would like to see is that it just takes all the RP you have pooled at the time then have buff just run its course with its duration based on RP taken. Downside is that you couldn't keep it going longer by generating more RP but you could continue with your normal priority list.

Monk

From a DPS and Healer PoV incredibly happy with the new talents.

Vital Connections is brilliant for MW and I am curious on how this works for WW.Calling out the Lightwell syndrome, an ability that lets you force detonate your passive orbs is great. A form of pseudo CD with enough orbs up.

As WW it doesn't really say if it would strike the same target multiple times and how many times it would hit. Would it hit only 5 out of 10 targets in a pack? Just wouldn't know yet.

Chi Explosion is really nice for both as it gives a bit more demand on AoE healing and damage.

Serene is my favorite choice by far. MW is going to do a great amount of low cost healing and great Chi generation. If there was anything to get wet over it would be the WW version. 10 seconds of refunded Chi. Spam Blackout, get immense amounts of brew stacks, profit.

Honorable mention to With or Without You in the hunter tree. Love hunter, hate the pets. Anything that lets me get away with not having one = Win.

Comment by RaiGuthix

Defile= Unholy's favorite spell, ever. Stack mastery, drop that defile, use chilblains or remorseless winter to keep enemies in it (or gorefiend's grasp). Watch the damage skyrocket and drop nubs left and right.

Comment by Aqonomic

For everyone wandering what Lich King abilities have to do with Draenor, let's take a stroll through history!Way back when on the orcish world of Draenor there was a warlock called Ner' Zhul. He was the Warchief of Draenor after the Dark Portal first closed and was decieved by Kil' Jaeden into forming a blood pact which bound his orcish people into service of the Burning Legion. After the end of the second war Ner 'Zhul attempted to find new lands to conquer and escape to by opening more portals like the Dark Portal but was stopped and killed by Kil 'Jaeden who ripped his soul out of his body. Ner 'Zhul then agreed to enter Kil 'Jaeden's service once more and was bound to the frozen throne which increased his power tremendously. Ner 'Zhul ruled the Scourge alone until he 'merged' with Arthas. Currently Ner 'zhul's fate is unknown since Arthas' death and Bolvar's rise as the Lich King.

I wonder if blizz will expand this story, or if it might be a bridge into another expansion or if it is just there because Death Knights are 'created' by the Lich King.

Comment by Karoxen

Breath of Sindragosa needs to be able to proc the level 75 talents in order to be worth using outside heavy burst AOE situations, I predict, although its only being limited by the ability to generate Runic Power as of this writing holds some promise. The way this spell functions may give it a niche function to blood for increased AOE threat on demand at particularly bleeding-edge group DPS levels, since the other two talents presently function with ramp-up damage.

Defile's simplicity may make it a default go-to for Unholy, who already casts it on cooldown on even single-target situations. Depending on how the other two talents shake out, Frost may opt to take it as well, although the mode with which it increases in strength concerning the number of targets it hits per second threaten to make it a low-level choice on single target fights for them. Assuming Blood can proc this upgraded version of the spell for free, this may also be another acceptable choice for them.

Necrotic Plague is the real wild card of this tier. Depending on its relative strength to Blood Plague, it may run the gambit from a side-grade to an up-grade on single target, but the promise of increasing potency jumping between targets have promise from an AOE DPS standpoint, particularly to Frost, who otherwise find it clunky to cast Pestilence in the middle of an AOE session frequently. How the increasing strength functions in relation to Festering Strike extending the duration of the disease make this a somewhat ambiguous spell for Unholy, although certainly a promising one.

Comment by Havik666

Once again, I see another max tier for DKs with no mitigation whatsoever. They all look rather interesting from a dps perspective but there is no use for any of them for tanking. Which one a tank chooses is going to come down to which does the most damage: which is not a fun choice for tanks. Might as well force holy pallies to choose between 3 CC abilities, it's just as absurd.

Comment by Havik666

Once again, I see another max tier for DKs with no mitigation whatsoever. They all look rather interesting from a dps perspective but there is no use for any of them for tanking. Which one a tank chooses is going to come down to which does the most damage: which is not a fun choice for tanks. I find it quite disconcerting that EVERY OTHER CLASS has some sort of 90 talent which either morphs based upon spec or is based upon that class's exclusive role (ie rogues have only damage based 90 talents, paladins have ones which morph to fit the current role etc.) but DKs seem to be in development purgatory where the devs decided to throw out some rehashed LK moves and completely ignore blood, again. Makes me wonder whether or not Blood DKs are in for another Firelands esq period of worthlessness or underpoweredness (compared to other tanks) when WOD goes live.

If anyone from bliz is reading this, tell class design to fix it. Now. Let em know that these 100 talents are worthless for tanking, two out of the three are worthless for frost and that they should add in morphs to make these more useful for specs other than unholy.

Comment by EMPHaraljier

For Breath of Sindragosa, 15 runic power a sec is 15 too many, I mean it might be okay for Blood spec, but Frost and Unholy depend on runic power with Death Coil and Frost Strike too much to just blow it all like that.

Necrotic Plague sounds iffy. I not sure that it would be worth it since you can't spread it with Blood Boil/Pestilence, but I guess it would be okay for Frost, since the spec doesn't rely on blood boil so much anyway.

Defile sounds... good. But then I don't use Death and Decay very much because I don't like having to point and click, it throws me off balance in pvp having to take my hands off the keys to do it (just me, I know it's weird). HOWEVER, that's some pretty decent damage we are looking at, so idk, that might be something I just get used to.

Comment by asiankami

Death Knight seems like another class with no new PVP talents.

For Narcotic Plague, the fact that it jumps to a new target after ticking on its damage would be a high risk at removing CCs on other players as well as a damage mitigation into the own spell as it removes the debuff from the target you are trying to kill.

As for Defile, it is never realistic to cast aoe targeted area spells in PVP since players should not be standing still. OMG it grows, cause I am really just going to stand there and take damage for no reason.

Breath of Sindragosa, Ok so its constant cone of cold that doesn't slow and since I'm depleting my runic power I cant hit with any of my other powerful strikes let alone survive if I need to use conversion since PVP as a blood DK is not realistic for players who actually plan on getting high MMR

Comment by Lycanlord

if they make breath of syndragosa proc the same as frost strike, it will be #$%^ing perfect. BLIZZARD! PLEASE HEAR ME!

Comment by polvitaklaaja

at the moment im between necrotic plague and defile for unholy play.

would need more info about necrotic plague to make decision, but at the moment it looks more likely choise for me than defile.

yet still lvl100 skills look fun.

Comment by ice101v

The lvl 100 talents may seem cool(after all they are based on LK abilities like the lvl 90 ones) but I don't think they will be very useful at all, just like the lvl 90 talents.

Necrotic Plague, this is really geared towards UH, the disease spec. Doesn't say what kind of damage it deals right now but even if it is shadowfrost damage Frost is going to be diseaseless come WoD(DW already doesn't need blood plague and with the removal of disease modifiers on strikes 2h has no reason to use plague strike now). Unless there are lots of long lasting add fights/can stack on one target if only one is available or deals an insane amount of damage frost will just skip it. Lack luster for blood as it doesn't increase tanking ability.

Defile would be funny to troll people with that have lower end computers as it gets really huge from hitting alot of players, otherwise its just an up jumped DnD. Not every exciting, nor is it good for blood DKs or frost. Doesn't do anything to increase tanking ability for blood and frost already has strong AoE, plus it does shadow damage and not frost.

Breath of Sindragosa, useless for all 3 specs because it interrupts the rune regen cycle by not procing the lvl 75 talents. I wonder if blizzard has learned that anything costing RP other than abilities than proc the regen are useless/a hindrance? I point to everything but FS,DC,RS, and dark sim having its RP cost removed over the course of mop. Seems like the devs were learning but this talent takes that hope away and bashes its head in.

Its early and beta hasn't even started yet, heres hoping these abilities get some major overhauls, or the class does at least.

Comment by Mellro

I think it's rather cool that alot of abilities for classes nowadays are abilities that bosses once used on us (i.e. Defile for DKs, used by Arthas, or Hammer of the Righteous for Pallies, used by Eadric the Pure). It's as if we are currently learning the secrets and techniques of these powerful bad guys and teaching them to more members of our class. I know that was the explanation during the warlock green fire quest.

That really blends game mechanics in well with lore and story which I think is really cool.

Comment by Gutrickk

I think that these talents are awesome. However, I do hope that the Breath of Sindragosa can work with the lvl 75 talents; that way Unholy and Frost DK's won't exhaust themselves in PvP. Also, I hope that the MANY questions on Necrotic Plague can be answered, and my opinion on it (bare with me) is that: a passive aoe spell that stacks and spreads sounds pretty awesome, however, I do wish to know what will be going on with the confusion of how it stacks/spreads.

And, on the topic of Defile... I think that it should have a longer duration. I know it kinda sounds OP, but... Death Knights are just that awesome. :P

AND SPEAKING OF AWESOME... I *raises hand* vote that there should be a glyph (kinda like the priests) that allows us to summon a Val'kyr to fight for us. Y'know... kinda like how the Paladins get "Guardian of the Ancient Kings," I think we should be able to raise forth a Val'kyr to fight for us for about... Eh.... 40-60 seconds, with like... a 1.5- two minute cooldown?

Comment by Fixi

Not excited about the dk talents. Two are replacements of existing spells and will feel, well, the same right? And the third is meh. So really, hitting 100 is not going to offer a huge "wow" in the new talents for dks.

Comment by Edradred

I want defile so badly, but necrotic plague seems mandatory for unholy, being as we benefit so much from every disease we put on a target. *Sigh*

Comment by Elaeno

im just gonna truly miss army of the dead aswell as ghoul when im frost -.-

Comment by vakna2

How come the deathknights talents do not give a single target dps cd. Might be the cause for dk's being good at the start of this expansion but then suck at the end. BoS is crap only slightly helpful for a.o.e damage and when active your runes are going to take forever to recharge due to the high RP cost. So you will have some burst but then drop like a rock just don't get it Bliz . -_-

Comment by Zarin

So... What happens if you spam howling blast with Necrotic plague talent? Will only your main target get the debuff or will it affect every add it hits, and will it reset the stacks every time you deal damage with Howling Blast?

Comment by scourge2

Cookie Cutter Build Much?Tier 56 Blood and Unholy (pvp and pve sets alike) pick Rolling Blood 90.69% of the time over the other talents.Only Frost does not mainly pick Rolling Blood. Frost mainly picks Plague Leech for pve and Unholy Blight for pvp.Tier 57 ALL specs mainly pick Purgatory and rarely Anti-Magic Zone for pve. Lichborne is occasionally taken for pvp.Tier 58 ALL specs mainly pick Death's Advance for pve and Asphyxiate for pvp-fewer pick Chillblains for pvp.Tier 60 has some variety of choice.Tier 75 ALL specs mainly pick Death Pact and fewer Conversion. ALL specs (pvp and pve sets alike) pick Death Siphon 5.16% of the time over the other talents.Tier 90 has some variety of choice.Tier 100 will be interesting to see what will happen on live.

Comment by novicracker

I think the new talents are going to make a big difference in the play style and I'm looking forward to learning this new style.

Comment by punkmonk

I'd like to know a little more about Necrotic Plague's runic power generation component (as of 4/14/2014, every time an infected enemy tries to attack you, you gain 5 runic power). Does this work with all spells? With DoTs? I'm so sorry for every rogue out there wielding daggers. You're going to be laying an extra 10-25 RP on us per second lol. I can't wait to see how it works.

And it's amazing because, if they keep it as is, Necrotic Plague will be generating a ton more Runic Strikes per boss fight which will directly give us way more survivability because of Enhanced Rune Strike (every Rune Strike hit gives Blood DKs an absorb shield equal to their full attack power baseline + any Resolve built up thanks to the new Draenor Perk). Since the tooltip says every time an infected enemy "tries" to attack you, whatever avoidance we have come WoD won't diminish its effectiveness.

The Runic Power generation obviously also is going to greatly increase the number of Death Coil/Dark Transformations and Frost Strikes we get off in PvP. It's going to be mandatory in pvp if it's a great increase in disease damage, because the 5% Spell Damage reduction is crap in Sindragosa's Breath on top of inhibiting our rune generation in general, and what idiot is going to sit in Defile? It'd need a way bigger radius multiplier to make it inescapable, which I support but I doubt it'd be possible. Too much server lag every 30 seconds. I hope that Blizz buffs Sindragosa's Breath and Defile instead of nerfing Necrotic Plague, but that's wishful thinking at best and bland stupidity at worst.

Oh, and can you imagine being teamed up on with Necrotic Plague jumpin around? You'll never not be RP capped lol.

Comment by Locoslayer

Any mathematician around here who can develop a formula of damage done to compare between normal usage of Blood Plague and Frost Fever versus the growing potential of Necrotic Plague?

Normal diseases deals 25,8% attack power every 3 secs, a total of 51,6% each 3 secs, or 17,2% damage per second.

After having ticked a total of 5 times, NP should deal more damage than normal diseases (60% attack power as damage per 2 secs after the 12th second).

The question: anyone who can develop a formula of total damage done in attack power % for the growing of NP + one for normal diseases, taken into account the dp2s and dp3s

I'm fairly interested in theorycrafting with such numbers, seeing as how much bossdamage potential NP has versus the normal stuff.

Comment by Koroth

I missed something here.

When were tiers 4 and 5 (levels 60 & 75) swapped? Or is that a WoWhead error?

Comment by Killawar

I just really wish that when it came to Death Knights' design they wouldn't seem like they just took our old abilities that were baseline and threw them into a tree. From a pre-mop standpoint Death Knights got super nerfed. Why? Lets go down the list:

1. Removal of desecration. Super important for PvP.2. Making a 'choice' between AMZ and Lichborne - which was a gigantic nerf to Unholy from a PvP aspect. 3. First tier talents throwing in Unholy Blight - which was again a nerf to Unholy in PvP and a very insignificant PvE nerf as it added a slight bit of damage to their kit. 4. 3rd tier CRUSHED both Frost and Unholy as Chilblains & Death's Advance were each exclusive to their respective specs.... But at least they added one new ability - right? >.>5. Death Pact placement in the talent tree..... Please just - no.

In short I just wish that they would have at least seemed like they were putting new and exciting stuff in our tree as Death Knights instead of just jamming things that were baseline and frankly quite important to each spec either into a tree or just completely removing it. The addition of three new things are nice but I just feel if it would be better to return to the old "Frost gets Chilblains, UH gets Desecration etc" type deal. Blizzard outwardly expresses that "THE FLAVOR OF THE CLASS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO US" so then why is it when it comes to Death Knight 'flavor' we get placed in the outhouse?

Desecration? Please? Chilblains for frost? Please? Can we add something new and neat in their place - along with everything else that seems to have been lazily slapped on the tree?

Comment by rappydoo21

My thoughts on DK WoD talents so far:

Level 15: Plague Leech is still the orange from the apples here. I also wonder how it will interact with Necrotic Plague since NP will replace both Blood Plague and Frost Fever.

Lv30: With the further nerfing of Anti-Magic Zone to 20%, down from 40%, they should increase the duration to 5 or 6 seconds to compensate.

Lv45: DK mobility still sucks. I think Death's Advance is the right talent to fix this but the movement increase is still pretty low. Asphyxiate is also the orange in the apples here, and may be too powerful a stun for a 30sec CD. With WoD moving away from too much CCs, I can see Blizz increasing the cooldown or outright changing the talent, and just baking the talent to Strangulate.

Lv60: No comment. I still do not like this tier, but I guess it's better now that it's gained earlier for leveling DKs.

Lv75: I like the change to Death Pact, not requiring a minion and giving you a debuff in exchange for the huge health restored in the process. Conversion is still a really crappy talent to me IMO, since it requires us to sacrifice RP which would be better spent on offensive abilities. If I were to change this, it should just take a snapshot of our current amount of RP, and heal you for said amount without consuming it, and just attach a cooldown (maybe 1min). So for example, if one had 60 RP and use Conversion, it would heal you for X amount (2% health for every 5 RP per second) = 24% health over 10 seconds. This way, Conversion has to be used intelligently to get the full use of it, e.g. not using it with low RP.

Lv90: These cooldowns are still ok I guess, but I wish they never removed the damage components in them from MoP beta.

Lv100: There's still alot of mystery behind Necrotic Plague. Apparently, applying NP through abilities gives a stack but does not increase duration, so NP will always only last 30 seconds and must be reapplied. Still, it seems much more powerful than both diseases it replaces combined, ticking 50% faster (2 seconds from BP/FF's 3 seconds), spreads to another target every tick, and starts dealing AP x 1.00 damage at 20+ seconds (AP x 1.5 at 30 second). What I'm wondering is how it'll interact with some abilities/talents, such as Plaguebearer/Plague Leech. It also doesn't mention a stack 'cap'.I'm also excited about Defile, the Lich King's signature ability. It outright does twice the damage from Death and Decay (AP x .208 vs. DnD's AP x .104), and its damage can increase up to 15% per second. Will be a hard choice between this and NP as Unholy.Breath of Sindragosa seems really cool on paper, but it doesn't fit the Lv100 kit very well to me, IMO. I see it being picked for Frost DKs, but not sure how well it would interact for Unholy/Blood DKs. Guess we'll have to wait for Beta to see.

Comment by Sorotia

I was originally thinking Necrotic Plague all the way for my Frost DK, but then I got to thinking about Defile...it would do Shadowfrost so it would benefit from Frozen Heart. I can use Plague Bearer to apply Blood Plague without having to waste a rune on the wet noodle strike that is Plague Strike and throw in the D&D glyph which I would hope affects Defile.

Might not be such a bad idea for PvP...

Comment by coolios15

RIP Blood DK's only way to AoE tank, look at the lvl 56 talents and you'll understand... what little AoE aggro we could possibly have, which wasn't enough by the way, is completely gone, the reason blood DKs weren't being used in raids much is now even worse than it was before? RIP in pepperonis my favorite tank spec... no more diseases... QQ

Comment by Frostflames90

Pretty much agree with all the other comments here, but I'll put my thoughts down, just because.

Breath of Sindragosa is predictably the worst, for the same reason as conversion- costs continuous RP which is needed for Rune regen.

Defile actually looks pretty fun to use, I imagine dropping this in the enemy graveyard during an RBG would be fun, plus on trash in PvE it would be awesome too. Only issue is its replacement of DnD, but it makes sense I guess.

Necrotic Plague seems to be the winner here though, versatile in all aspects of playing, plus fun too! Imagine the carnage in Goldshire watching them drop like flies. Trash mobs would go down a little quickly for this to work based on current times it takes to kill them (although this is set to be rebalanced). PvP fights could be really good too, infecting everyone in a team fight quickly, and if you die, you have a good DoT on them to possibly take them down. On a raid/dung boss this seems better too, since Defile requires numbers to maximise its potential, BoS is just...no, and this still looks like it would work well on single targets. I also don't really have an issue with it replacing my current diseases, since for me they didn't really seem to be all that good tbh.

Well there's my piece of mind, anyway

Comment by Spitzio

Looks like Lichborne will become mandatory due to that 10% leech factor it now gives. So not only is it like an insignia but it heals making the other two talents look pretty bad, especially in PvP.

Comment by Aeldastra

I am quite disappointed about the Lichborne change (pvp). The removal to turn Undead and heal yourself with Death Coil is just bad imo. It's been there since WoTLK and now they took it from us. Sigh. The new "replaced" effect, 10% Leech for the duration feels weak, even tought it's on a 2 min cd. I guess it should be improved, make it more rewarding. For example more Leech or return Death Coil heal and nerf the heal itself.

Otherwise I dont have a lot to complain about. Thumbs up for Necrotic Plague btw.

Edit: In WoD Beta it seems that in fact, Death Coil still heals you while Lich Borne is active. Is it supposed to heal you anyway, althought it doesnt turn you undead anymore?

Comment by Kbooze

My thoughts on these talents:-Plaguebearer

Not a bad talent. Can't see much use unless you have Necrotic Plague though.

Blood: Pretty useful if you have trouble remembering to reapply your diseases

Frost: Same as blood. Only difference is that Plague Strike will be the only one you will need to use this for.

Unholy: Same as the other two, except it is just... less practical in my opinion than just refreshing them yourself unless you are rushed.

-Necrotic Plague

I can see some good potential in this, but like others before me have stated, there are too many questions to know for sure.

Blood: I can tell this will be the Blood ToC(Talent of Choice) because of the simple fact that "You get 5 runic power whenever a target infected with necrotic +ATTEMPTS+ to attack you. Right there. 5 additional RP about every 2-3 seconds. it may not seem like a lot, but over time that will help.

Frost: I want to know if this interacts with Obliterate. I'm going to assume it does, and if so, would be the Frost ToC, as you wouldn't have to worry about keeping Blood Plague applied, as both of your diseases are rolled into one spell.

Unholy: I'm not fully well-versed in Unholy, so bear with me here, but I am going to assume that this talent would be decent for Unholy, but not the ToC.

-Defile

Interesting talent in general, and practical, but not useful for all specs.

Blood: First of all, if there was a different ToC over Necro Plague, this would be it. The AoE damage is slightly useful for keeping aggro, but the main part would be the 10% damage reduction while they're standing on the ground. I honestly think, what they could do is make the first 10 seconds free, then after 10 seconds, take 5 RP per second for 5 seconds, 10 RP for 5 seconds, and so on. It would be more malleable at that point.

Frost: Minimally useful. The only thing I can see that would be useful is the damage reduction, because that would be a very minor DPS boost.

Unholy: As I stated before, I'm not well-versed in Unholy, but I assume this would have the same boons and restrictions as Frost. Mayhaps a little bit more of a DPS boost, but not much.

-Breath of Sindragosa

Generally situational talent. Not so useful (That I can see)

Blood: You need RP to dump into Rune Strike, not to mention that Blood isn't here to deal crap tons of damage, so the only good thing about this would be the 5% heal from spells cast by enemies hit by this.

Frost: Very situational. You can use on a boss fight that has a lot of channeled AoE spells, but otherwise, pretty low DPS boost for a RP reliant move.

Unholy: Same as frost.

There you go, my not-so-professional analysis of these talents. If you like it, please thumbs up!

Comment by Wearax

The new ultimate DK talent-spec combo will be the plaguebearer; random(lichborne pref); aspyxiate; random (runic corruption pref); conversion; random (desecrated pref or more cc immun); and necrotic plagueall in unholy talent with the chains damage glyph so you'll have slow to spa with base rota - or you can go for double runic power gen (necrotic doesn't apply chillblains slow), dispell immun and a random (death coil/runic power for me)

so you'll need a pesrilence for blood rune use and scourge strike for unholy rune and death rune use and chain spam for frost rune use; after pest, you can do more scourge(necrotic strike will be removed posibly) so dc will give extra stacks for necrotic and you can just run around, chaining and pestilencing (dnd-ing for ranged unholy rune use) and dc spam and wait for the finishig stacks of necrotic plague for burst scourge strike all in and you'll be able to do it every 30 secs since your stun will have 30 sec cd too; the ghoul transform will cost no runes and if you go in mele vs a mele, you can just turn in the conversion and from necrotic and runic power in pvp you'll hve still infinite runic power.I have to go back to my old DK...

Comment by Martoch

.... so if my DK becomes the new Lich King, is there a Sim City mini-game to command undead minions?

Comment by mikebrew

cant wait to test out those new talents in WoD

Comment by Terur

Interesting perks...

My fingers can little rest...more simple rotation.FrostEmpowered Pillar of FrostEmpowered Pillar of Frost - runeless Pillar of Frost, use on cd or for raid frenzy. UnholyEnhanced Dark TransformationEnhanced Dark Transformation - runeless Dark Transformation, use and do not break rotation.

It seems unholy main pet don't bursted by new perks. So sorrow.

Comment by Terur

Necrotic PlagueA powerful disease that deals (4.662% of Attack power) Shadowfrost damage per stack every 2 sec for 30 sec. Each time it deals damage, it gains 1 stack, and infects another nearby enemy within 8 yards if possible.

You gain 2 Runic Power whenever a target infected with Necrotic Plague attempts to attack you.

Replaces Blood Plague and Frost Fever, and is applied by any ability which applied either. This effect cannot be refreshed; it gains 1 stack instead.

Interesting abilityes...Plaguebearer - more faster add stacks to this disease = great dps burst for solo target. Plague Leech - need changes or it does not affect Necrotic Plague. Maybe it take all stacks of Necrotic Plague and work if stacks more than two.Unholy Blight - burst add stacks to this desease = mass PvP burst...but cd is too long.Outbreak - with glyph it add 2 stacks and take 30 RP(cheaper than Death Coil...) ...in some situations maybe it prefer for unholy - but it reduce pet damage(less stacks for our pet) and reduce instant damage(less DC) and it useful for solo target, for mass we too quickly reach MAX of stacks(it must be).Necrotic Plague - " Each time it deals damage, it gains1 stack, and infects another nearby enemy within 8 yards if possible" :0 sec/ first enemy(1 stack) / second enemy 2 sec/2 stacks/ 1 stack4 sec/4 stacks/ 3 stacks6 sec/6 stacks/ 5 staks...30 sec/ 30 stacks/ 29 stacks ...too hard , i think it must have max stacks 15 or less ...or we see wide eyes of all non-dk DPSs, but after seen 100 tier for other classes - we need more Necrotic stacks)

More enemy - more fast adding stacksDuration 30 sec and no renew:Unholy: More burst on start and near MAX stacks use main filler skills - it must make great damage.Frost DW: Our rotation have a lot of HW and FS ... but I think more useful take Plague Leech and make more instant damage. This talant not prefered, because you have only 25 sec for stacks.If taked it give a few DPS up.Frost : Not much HW, a lot of FS...more prefer Plague Leech. This talant not prefered, because you have only 25 sec for stacks.If taked it give few DPS up.Blood ...This talant valuable - "You gain 2 Runic Power whenever a target infected with Necrotic Plague attempts to attack you." and some aoe damage.If taked it give a few DPS up.

Comment by vnedelcu

OK, i have to admit that conversion was a bit OP when it consumed 5 rp per second to restore 2% health every 1 second. But now 10 rp is just to much! Raise its cost to 7 rp but not to 10 rp.! This talent keeps us alive. Death Pact is a $%^& because its cd is to high, and also Death Sipon, because it consumes Death Runes. Yes, we have Death Strike and the healing from lich borne, but the healing provided by lichborne is very weak, and death strike eats 2 of our runes. Please, make conversion to cost 7 rp.

Comment by Nolzog

I have to ask again on this page too.

Why is Unholy Blight a thing when we already have an ability that does the same thing basically?

I also don't understand what's up with the glyph pool. Some seem to be out of date, others seem to be pointless or redundant.

My biggest peeve is how Blizzard has tried to make the talent trees affect the way we play our characters, but instead of augmenting our abilities, they generally limit what we can do, how often we can do things, and most of the glyphs are just trade-offs or are PVP-oriented which is one of my biggest turn-offs.

I certainly hope that when I get back into WoW, it isn't about picking the color of your attacks but actually picking how you want to play your character. I want to go Unholy because I want to be a battle-necromancer who summons undead minions, spreads plagues, and cuts his enemies down with a blighted runeblade. I may also want to go with Blood because I'd want to be a gory juggernaut who feeds off the life force of my enemies as I wear them down with a gore-caked runeblade. Two different styles of play that I hope won't be diluted into basically choosing the colors of my attacks and the stats I have on my gear...

Comment by UltimaOfMoo

Would the combination of Unholy Blight & Necrotic Plague work like I really really want it to?

Comment by Souldestructor89

In case you guys aren't updated here's a few tips on what the TCalc says for Necrotic Plague and Defile.

Necrotic Plague states it can be applied by anything that gives Frost Fever or Blood Plague meaning you only need to use one or the other depending on spec, It states as well it can't be refreshed but can be applied by any abilities that applies either of those two, it is on targets for 30 secs and deals dmg every 2 seconds. it can get up to 15 stacks but what i think is each time it deals damage gaining 1 stack and instead of being refreshed gives 1 stack when applied from any ability or talent for Plaguebringer from first tier. The stacks are to either amplify dmg or spread the Necrotic Plague. Thus having to notice the ability also states you gain 2 RP when an enemy attacks you. For Blood Knights they can't run out of RP. As for the stacking benefit i say all it does is make it so it spreads. they gain 1 application of it as it spread between enemies. (This may also implicate that in WoD they are adding more adds during boss fights or adding more trash mobs.)

Defile - Seems to either A. Be the same duration as D&D or B. has no duration or the duration is the same as cd.

Sindragosa's Breath, if you didn't notice this can be quite useful with a little addition being AMS+This spell you heal your health you gain RP each time spell damage is being casted on you. during combat you want to apply this only for when you are awaiting a damaging spell. In PvP it is quite useful against caster classes. they ALWAYS use a spell and during the 6 secs they can gain health or the caster can keep hitting during that time to heal them up or dps quickly.

Comment by Drak1224

Necrotic Plague looks like the obvious choice at first but I may try Breathe of SIndragosa just to see how it affects overall with frost.

Comment by vnedelcu

Conversion definitely needed a nerf (when its cost was just 5 rp). But now, 20 rp is a huge cost and conversion is almost useless. 20 rp to restore 2% health every second, that means 100 rp to restore just 10% of our health over 5 seconds. It's a huge cost for a small amount of healing and a huge dmg reduction. it think that converssion should cost 10 rp, or perhaps you should remove this talent and find a new one. death pact may be a solution instead converssion, but that 2 min. cd is still annoying. Death siphon heals very nice in pve, but i'm not sure if it is as good in pvp as it is in pve. Maybe i'm wrong but i watched some videos and dk's survivability (dps spec, not blood) does not look too good

Comment by Nolzog

Why can't Blood dual wield anymore? :(

What a shame... :,(

Comment by Raeke

Imagine this... a 40 man raid of level 100 Unholy DK's, half with Necrotic, half with Defile, and just landing in the middle of Orgrimmar... Oh gawd that would be fun. I might do a little more PVP this expansion!

Comment by kelevrah09

Comment by hipere00

Does Necrotic plague work on Unholy DK's? does it affect the way other Unholy abilities work? Is it boosted by mastery and can it be enhanced by passives on Unholy?

Comment by vnedelcu

I have just played on ptr and i realised that the new Lichborne talent still allows Death Coil to heal the DK and it doesn't give just leech.

Comment by vnedelcu

Death Strike's healing has serious problems as a blood dk. At lvl 90, Death Strike heals my blood Dk for just 3 k and my uh Dk for 10k.

Comment by jessybeausoleil

I'm really not sure, I'm not a great theorycrafter but I think using breath of sindragosa as a rp dump instead of death coil would be a dps increase for blood dk despite the lost of supplement rune of 60 talent and its not a big lost of survival against bosses using magic

Comment by Arnastrasz

Hey, here's a thought:

What if Might of the Frozen Wastes had an Enhancement Shaman's counterpart, allowing both one-handed and two-handed weapons to be used with equal efficiency, just like Frost Death Knights?

Comment by Cqn5eqvence

Death Siphon looks VERY promising, tyvm Blizz.

Comment by Nutarama

If Death Pact stays as it is, it's effectively the worst Talent in the Level 60 tier for tanking. Blizzard is lessening spike damage - instead of 1 hit for 50% of your health, it's now more like 5 hits for 10% of your health. This makes having a powerful Healing CD less important because there's little chance you'll take a whole spike and need to heal quickly. In addition, it's now only a net 25% HP heal because of the healing lost. This means even if you end up low and use Death Pact, it's likely to kill you by taking more damage than healing over the next few seconds.

Also, if a healer sees your health drop to 25% and then jump back to 75%, they might think you're fine and continue healing as normal (usually rolling HoTs and small heals). In fact, the absorption from your Death Pact is going to eat into their heals, likely to the point of you now receiving no healing at all for a few seconds after using it. Ultimately not good. You could macro a "/i I used Death Pact, Heal me!" into using the spell much like mages do with Cauterize, but if your healers don't understand what it means, you're still in trouble.

Even if those don't phase you, consider it's also going to be using a Major Glyph slot if you want to use it in the same way as before, since Risen Ally now has a baseline RP cost (which can be glyhped to not exist). So instead of having a 2-minute CD for 50% of your health, you have a 2-minute CD for 25% of your health (assuming that the healing absorb is used up) that requires you to bank RP to use. Banking RP means not spending it for your level 75 tier rune generation talent, which in turn means fewer Death Strikes, and Death Strike is still going to be the most important part of our rotation.

Comment by evanski1995

Sindragosa bless the death knights #breathofsindragosa

Comment by schnizol

Death knights have so many powerful abilities against casters. Why can't the casters get something good against death knights?

Comment by FuzzMeister

I dont know about you guys, but im a level 100 DK and ive been having trouble keeping runic power. Either im doing something wrong or...i dont know.

Any suggestions?

Comment by vnedelcu

uh dks really need necrotic strike back. why? because in pvp we are not capable to put enough pressure in arenas or against healers even with gargoyle and breath of sindragosa. and dots should not be dispellable for unholy because they are our main dmg. if we have to use plague strike again and again in order to reaply dots we lose uh or death runes that could be used for scourge strike or for healing. another reason for bringing back necrotic strike is the boring rotation. it would be also interesting to see blood strike back. if we don't want to use blood boil because we have already spread our dots, but we want to do more dmg on a single target (and we don't want to use festering strike because we want to keep our frost runes for icy touch or chains of ice for example or for other reasons) we should use blood strike (that should deal more damage than blood boil, but less dmg than festering strike, more exactly a dmg similar to scourge strike).

Comment by lakisoft

Hi all,Could you please someone provide a current recommended talent for dps?Thank you.

Comments

Comment by LumenCZ

I can't wait! These talents look great :D

Comment by PinkiePi

For druids, the last talent should be "Might of Malorne" instead of "Might of Malfurion."

Comment by nightblaze23

Nice. All three of these look great for Balance. :-D Even more power pulled down from the heavens.

Comment by Adaire

Of all the new talents blizzard announced, I'm most excited about the druid ones. From a feral/guardian perspective, all three look interesting- touch of elune may be a trap for guardian at the moment, but it may have great potential depending on the situation and when, or if, the shield caps. If it doesn't, and one FR at least every 15 seconds will refresh it.... After Blizzard changed the bear talents, I'm even more excited about them. Guardian of Elune trades 2 less seconds on savage defense to increase dodge on it from 45% to 100%, which will lower the uptime slightly, but definitely a great trade-off. Pulverise is very intriguing, especially since the 6.0 patch notes currently have removed the cooldown on lacerate- 500% weapon damage is nothing to sniff at, plus 20% less damage for 10 seconds, *and* 30 extra rage? Yes, please. Finally, Bristling Fur- 50% less damage taken on a 1-minute cooldown, despite lasting only 3 seconds, will without a doubt find great niche use on certain encounters.

Also, Might of Malfurion's Savagery's feral bonus... that removes the (in my opinion) most annoying part of the feral rotation, flat-out. The other two feral talents don't seem to be much in the way of dps gains (excepting will of malfurion bloody thrash with aoe), so it'd be fantastic to be able to use Might of Malfurion Savagery as feral.

edit: changed feral talent names to the current ones blizzard changed them to, and revamped guardian comments due to blizzard... making them completely different.

Comment by Verenikin

Comment by sihar

MoM and WoM both look great for feral. I'm not quite as sold on resto usefulness, I guess it'll take actually using the talents to get a feel for their benefits.

Comment by lorezon

For Guardian, there doesn't seem to be much of a choice. Malfurion's Tenacity will probably be good for solo grinding, but more armor (Mastery) has been at the bottom of our list this expansion, and I imagine will probably remain so given how much of it we have already, and how little (nothing) it does for us when fighting casters. Bristling Fur will probably get eaten by an autoattack in most fights unless every boss is now going to have a big, single hit with a cast time (or that gets used exactly on cooldown).

Guardian of Elune, on the other hand, has great potential, letting us use our rage on something useful when not taking damage, either because of tank swap mechanics, mechanics which take boss focus away from the tank (Thok's Rampages, for example), before a pull, or just when you're out of SD charges and aren't taking damage. Tooth and Claw helps somewhat in these situations, but I'd much rather spend my rage on a nice, tasty shield than on a weak attack coupled with a weak damage reduction (albeit one that can be used to benefit your co-tank). And that goes double (or triple, or more) if the shield is allowed to stack like T&C does.

Comment by Anyonka

MOONKIN LOVE ON TALENT TREE, im so excited for equinox

Comment by Komosar

For the Earthmother! cant w8 to get to lvl 100! the talents are awsome!

Comment by wolvkey

New talents seem kinda meh for Resto =\ Thankfully I also enjoy tanking, because the new tier looks GREAT for Guardian spec.

Comment by Steelie

Might of Malorne. For guardians is kinda weak. Lesser dmg taken with 50% with one spell and when Eneage got 1min cooldown. Nah dont like it. Make so it has 5 stacks of it or something like that. I still like the idea to try to buff Enrage. Becuase 1 hit with lesser dmg taken and 1min cooldown sounds very weak for me as a tank

Comment by MrVolare

I know that this is all subject to change, but hot damned, the lvl 100 talents look like what the 90 talents should have been: epic

Comment by mrmojorisin1135

Might of Malorne seems way too strong right now for balance

Comment by sapssey

great combination of talents at level 100.It doesn't feel like you have to go with one but actually have the choice because they could all work amazing.Great job here Blizz!

Comment by Deathegg

Equinox-Balance YES YES YES! As for the Touch of Elune for Cat, the idea of a feral using moonfire to build combo points is both awkward and comical. I'd love to see this in action, if only for a good laugh.

Comment by drewmeister11

Might of Malorne seems great for cat and boomkin. I'm a fan of having some nice passives over having extra abilities I always forget to use, and that should certainly increase my damage rate.

Comment by treecko

will of Malfurion looks sweet for the feral druid. :-)

Comment by Ardencroft

Might of Malfurion, I don't even know what I'll do now that half my time wont be spent hitting savage roar. More dps, probably..

Comment by Winisek

Comment by Gwiez

In fights where I have to be ranged sometimes, I often take Death Coil as Symbiosis. And I always grumble that I'm not getting combo points for using energy for it. Now I can moonfire to do that, and be just like spirit beasts were originally. If the another talent isn't still more appealing at launch.

Comment by bakedleech

Did anyone check to see if lower level talents changed? I'm excited about will of malfurion and an on demand absorb, but I expect to see might of malorne changed for guardian. Now when does the beta start? :)

Comment by yalasen

In the mindset of a Restoration Druid:

Touch of Elune: 5 seconds of free regrowth? Yes please. Pop this up with instant regrowth from Tree Form and oh my days.

Germination: Depending on the casting Druid's haste, I can see this being useful if you don't have any paticular mana issues, but otherwise I'd go with Touch of Elune. Best for comfortable, rejuvination spamming/Genesis AoE Raid Healers.

Might of Malorne: Probably best for the Tank Healer who doesn't suffer from lower than average mana regeneration, since you chain together regrowth/rejuvination/swiftmend/swiftmend. Or Finish off the Rejuvination on allies that you didn't want to genesis on because some needed the sustained healing, whereas otheres needed a quick fix.

Comment by miniwidge

Honestly I'm not sure what to think of these, especially for a bear tank. I don't want to REPLACE my frenzied regen with an armor boost. The boost is great but still.. I like my regen. That being said, I don't mind the other choices which I'd probably choose over the Touch of Elune, which seems better for a resto druid. I think there might be some tweaking to come once these get released, but they seem pretty good.

Comment by F3ar

As a guardian/feral druid, here are my opinions:

Guardian:Touch of Elune: Assuming they keep the crit rage gen model that they have now, I feel like this talent will be pretty damn nice later on (second half of 2nd tier and then 3rd tier of the expansion) as we'll be able to have almost 100% uptime. I really hope this stacks, but I feel like it wont. That frenzied regen with just a decent amount of vengeance is a life saver.

Will of Malfurion: Blizzard has said that armor will be more important in WoD - for the sake of this talent, I hope they're right. This will be the go-to talent for any physical-heavy fight (Will of the Emperor-esque fights). Other than that, I don't really see this being a huge deal. I will probably go with this to start off the 1st tier depending on rage gen and how Touch of Elune works.

Might of Malorne: This one I really like and dislike at the same time. I have a feeling that they're going to change this so it's something like "for 3 or 6 seconds after you use Enrage". If not, this could either be a really nice talent or really wasted on some tiny hit.

Feral:Touch of Elune: No. Moonfire is already very weak for both guardian and feral - unless they buff moonfire by a lot, I don't see this talent every being chosen. It's a waste of energy.

Will of Malfurion: This talent looks absolutely amazing for AoE fights. A fight like Fallen Protectors, if they're stacked up, this would be awesome.

Might of Malorne: ^&*!ing finally. Savage Roar is such a useless ability and should've been passive. It's a complete waste of energy that you could spend elsewhere. I have really high hopes for this talent and feel like this will be the go-to talent for almost every fight for ferals.

All in all, I like Will of Malfurion and Might of Malorne for feral, but I'm not too pleased with any of the guardian talents.Just my two copper.

Comment by Abernatheeee

I am loving the Might of Malorne talent, but I really feel like it's going to change. It just seems like it will end up one of those "YOU DON'T HAVE THAT TALENT? WHAT A NOOB. GTFO" choices that they want to stray away from. They'd be better off just owning up to savage roar being a mistake, making it passive for all, and redesigning the feral bit of that talent choice.

Comment by Saurisa

I play a Restoration Druid as an alt and I really like the Touch of Elune talent. It is simple yet can be very beneficial for a Resto Druid.

Comment by LorB

Farewell, Savage Roar. You will not be missed.

Comment by sechlar

Will of Malfurion is my choice in Guardian or Feral... Giving my bear a huge boost to armor or giving feral AoE bleeding are both great. However, for Balance I must opt into Might of Malorne... sustaining Eclipses on long fights should be a hefty damage boost.

Comment by Metrognome

I've noticed that all the level 100 talents give different benefits depending on spec... I like those talents the best because it gives more variation in pvp. Thank you Blizzard!

Comment by havoc777

Definitely looking forward to Touch of Elune, it would give me a reason to use Starfall. As a healer it changes Omen of Clarity to a 5 second duration instead of 1 spell which means you could get 2-3 free spells in instead of 1 if your quick

Comment by Khazarel

Might of Malorne looks absolutely amazing for balance druids, and it would be great for feral too. Will of Malfurion would also be great for feral, and Touch of Elune would be perfect for Resto.

Comment by D4GGR4

lets see the comment "druid so OP!" everywhere

Comment by bmworkman314

An eternal eclipse? That is drool worthy.With Dream of Cenarius, Balance could have a perma 25% damage buff!

Comment by ZeriusWolfhart

... Some very nice Balance love on those talents.

Choosing "Touch of Elune" means I can keep the current Ping Pong System in place and allow me to use my Starfall CD more often then the Minute CD its currently on.

Choosing "Will of Malfurion" allows me to have my currently placed DoT's to hit 400% harder, reducing the amount of time they will get to Tick. Another downside means I'll have to stand still to allow the channel, and some boss fights probably wont let me make much use of it.

Comment by Ravenhair

As a Resto druid, I am so sold for Touch of Elune. Granted there needs to be more tracking for the proc to take maximum use of it but still, I'll have it over the other two any day. Will of Malfurion sounds really meh and Might of Malorne...I'm really not fan of it consuming Rej/Regrowth, seems to be a real mana drain.

As Balance, Touch of Elune sounds really great, I'll definitely be testing it out. Once again, Will of Malfurion doesn't really strike my fancy, though I admit it will have its uses. As for Might of Malorne....I feel like this is going to be the talent I'll be rolling with most of the time. Extented Eclipse is such a treat.

EDIT: Talents names were different when I first typed this. :P

Comment by bendf2p

surprised nobody has caught onto this yet but if you combine soul of the forest and might of malrone your rotation could be similar to lifebloom x3 then rejuv followed by rotating regrowth swift mend all instantly

Comment by Animegirl

i'm not totally happy with them they've never looked very cool some do but i'm not a fan of passive.

Comment by DrPhase

The Balance portion of the talents look amazing, finally we get the equivalent of Starfall for solar through Touch of Elune - or we could pick Might of Malorne and get 100% uptime on Eclipses OR we could do insane multidoting through Zenith if we pick Will of Malfurion!Zenith could work really well with Celestial Alignment and looks like a - personal preference - much more fun way to deal damage to multiple targets than Hurricane, but of course, requires some setup.

The Feral versions look a bit lackluster and not really like talents but gamemechanics that should be implemented into the specialization, hopefully they'll rework them to something more interesting and/or fun. The same goes for most of the Guardian ones really.

The Restoration talents look a bit meh at first glance but with the new Omen of Clarity from Touch of Elune you could fit in 4-5 globals, thats a lot of free spells keeping in mind the frequency that it currently procs. Germination could really use some rework, 1 second feels like nothing and it's a really boring effect. Might of Malorne will definately be the go-to talent for me personally, it works so extremely well with Soul of the Forest if we can pull it off without using too much mana, imagine getting 100% haste on every HoT that you throw out! Rejuvenation(or pre-existing Regrowth effect) > Swiftmend > Rejuvenation/Wild Growth - Awesome!

Edit: Spelling errors.

Comment by ExperimentX4d2

Touch of Elune.

5 seconds of free regrowths, thank you VERY much!

Comment by mcappleby

Everyone QQs about SR, but really what else are we going to use that energy for? More weak FBs? This is speaking from a pve standpoint. I can understand QQing about SR from a pvp aspect.

I like the complexity of playing feral, that is why I play it. Sure, if you have trouble keeping SR up, then by all means, take that talent. But I find it much more interesting if they do some specific buffing to moonfire in cat form and give us another dot to weave in. Especially since they are removing dot snapshotting, our rotation just got a lot cleaner since we wont be dot clipping. So weaving in another dot on single target fights would be easily doable.

That would give us a really nice choice between an aoe talent and a single target talent. Then the SR one could actually be a decent boost for pvp when keeping up SR actually is a pain. Not a bad rounding out of that tier's talents.

Comment by Riegal

Looking forward to the savage roar passive. While some of the fights are still melee friendly there seem to be a bit of a shift towards movement fights and one less thing to worry about in those fights will be very helpful.

Comment by Arberian021

I like all talents here====> It seems that Blizzard did a good job with the talents.For my Balance Druid my choice is Might of Malorne , For Restoration I would choose Might of Malorne too because i will be able use Swiftmend as much as i want .

Comment by Keelerak

I don't like how there are pretty much 4 separate and unrelated sets of talents. The only ones that correspond are Will of Malfurion and Might of Malorne for Feral and Balance (AoE damage related to DoTs and making a damage buff all-time passive, respectively). I understand that each spec needs talents for different role, but they should have kept them at least thematically similar.

As for talents themselves, they look very interesting (though I wonder what use could Moonfire have for feral, since their only source of spellpower, Nurturing Instinct, only gives nature spell damage)

Comment by Sxeros

I really really really don't like the current talent points from Resto Druid's perspective. Of course they're going to change some, but still.. really lacking in way of powering up class in PvE.

Touch of Elune.. there's really no places where I use Regrowth more than once in that time to help with some bigger damage. You can land 3 Regrowths in that time if you're already casting, if not you can only land 1 extra Regrowth, so really, you're giving up lots of free time from Clearcasting in order to sometimes get that nice streak, assuming that you even NEED to do that healing in the first place.

Will of Malfurion seems the best choice in most of places. That extra tick for Rejuvenation can help a lot in specific fights, but even then there's only so few fights where I really make good use out of Genesis.

Might of Malorne feels reaaaally situational as well. I would like it way more if your Swiftmend would do like 20-40% less healing but it wouldn't consume the Rejuvenation/Regrowth. That'd actually feel like a talent.

Comment by Andros99

I would say, they need to tweak a bit the talents for Feral.

Savage Roar has always been an important finisher ability which boosts your overall damage significantly but that doesn't give you that satisfaction of seeing a big damage number popping up. I should just be a passive ability altogether or maybe even a proc, for everyone as a standard.

That been said, the go-to talent for feral would be Will of Malfurion. AoE damage has always being a problem for feral, with very few abilities available for it. I usually end up using up Thrash once then just focusing on one target, or Berserk and spam Swipe but depending on a 3 min cd. I just seems to me like this passive from Will of Malfurion should also be a given.

Talents for Feral (and even some for Guardian) seem to address some problems of these specs but they don't actually give us anything truly exciting to look forward to at lvl 100. I take a look at some other classes and there's some pretty nifty abilities in store for them... so... #What about Me?#

Comment by Kataclysia

My thoughts on the new Talents:

This is the perspective of a Restoration Druid.

Touch of Elune - This is one of those talents that I was excited to see. It change to Omen of Clarity would benefit a Resto Druid a lot.

Will of Malfurian - I am sure this talent could be useful to a Resto Druid, yet I believe ToE will be more common place. This has uses, but it may not be the top pick for Restoration.

Might of Malorne - This talent is really hard to gauge. It could be really awesome or it could be a flop. Only time will tell which way this talent will go.

That being said I would definitely choose Touch of Elune for a Restoration Druid.

Comment by Grum88

So glad my 2 mains are druid and paladin <3

Comment by Datech

Hmm, I think I would choose Touch of Elune for as Feral for some DMG boost :P

Comment by hemiska4455

Feral druid is to OP!

Comment by Rinsletify

Might of Malorne+Soul of the forest for resto in PvP.By spamming rejuv/swiftmend, not only do you have high hps with only instants, but you'll be able to use cyclone with only 0.5s cast time for an entire arena. No one will ever be able to stop your clones again. This has such a huge potential that arena teams could be made entirely around switching to the targets where cyclone is on the DR.

Comment by screemdate

Am I the only one that does not like any of the talents for feral druids?

I mean Savage Roar is VERY good for getting instant casts in very many PvP situations - for me at least this talent is not a good choice and the other two just sucks for ferals... :( (talking about PvP situations)

Comment by shaaedowlynx

Hi all.I disagree with might of malorne. It is of course very nice to have the buff up all the times but I rly like the sound of the buff too, it gives a 'touch of savagery' to my kitty :)given that, small ot, look at lvl 87 symbio, its very nice but I never have this spell when I am questing and soloing around, so this makes my kitty 'incomplete' compared to other players, given that in other classes lvl 87 spell is quite strong one. I want my lvl 87 spell always with me, not only when I am in a group.Back to topic, I would like to see savage roar like this "savage roar, increases your damage don by xx% for 30 (or 40) seconds cost 10 energy" and for the level 100 talent... well give the druid some more interesting not passive ability. Look at the rogues, priests or other classes, they get a new ability. I want a new one for my kitty too.Thx for the attention.

Comment by shaaedowlynx

Hi all.I disagree with might of malorne. It is of course very nice to have the buff up all the times but I rly like the sound of the buff too, it gives a 'touch of savagery' to my kitty :)given that, small ot, look at lvl 87 symbio, its very nice but I never have this spell when I am questing and soloing around, so this makes my kitty 'incomplete' compared to other players, given that in other classes lvl 87 spell is quite strong one. I want my lvl 87 spell always with me, not only when I am in a group.Back to topic, I would like to see savage roar like this "savage roar, increases your damage don by xx% for 30 (or 40) seconds cost 10 energy" and for the level 100 talent... well give the druid some more interesting not passive ability. Look at the rogues, priests or other classes, they get a new ability. I want a new one for my kitty too.Thx for the attention.

Comment by Jiunec

We should expect changes in theese talents. I mean, Soul of the Forest + Might of Malorne ? That's ridiculously good in PVP, and ridiculously mana abusive in PvE.

As pr. now, i only find Guardian and Balance benefiting/realistic from the new(/current) lvl 100 talents.

Comment by excalibr4

Malfurion is unquestionably the talent for Guardian Druids. I did the math on my tank and it is a bit confusing. It says my armor will be increased by 200% of my agility. Well my agility is 24000, which m I would get a passive buff of around 50 k armor. Well here comes the confusing part. In my Boomkin form I have 21000 armor and it says that decreases my physical damage by 31% (does that include spell damage?) So when I switch to bear form my armor jumps up to 114k and my physical damage is decreased by 71%. So once I get Malfurion and add 50k in armor that has to make a serious difference in the % of damage I take. The best part is that it is passive and constant so I don't have to worry about pushing another button or having inconsistent results in fights, where a talent, although passive, only happens once in a while.

Comment by TheOldBear

In all, I think the Balance Level 100 talents are gunna get re-done.

Might of Malrone is plain OP, it'll be required, and this "new" talent system is supposed to be about choice.Touch of Elune is pointless beyond aesthetics, and should therefore be baseline change to Starfall. Will of Malfurion is just feels like a dumb fit for a talent; it should be the new Druid spell for the expansion, but like class-wide CD that accelerates all damage/heal-over-time effects.

Comment by alkemist

Touch of Elune for resto is pretty much an extension of our legendary meta gem Courageous Primal Diamond however you can no longer double dip with that and omen. However I'm not complaining, I love it when my meta gem procs... so I can't wait to use this in WoD. Free rejuvenation blankets galore.

Comment by Jswagmcbee

For us balance druids as much as malorne looks good... Elune is gonna be the way to go. getting resets on your starfall and now sunfall is too big of a dps increase. Malorne may be good once you get a ton of mastery but i find myself now getting into eclipse fast enough i don't see the point of Malorne until you get alot of mastery.

Just my opinion tho.All of them look great can't wait for launch! :D

Comment by Horcos

woah, these talents are OP

Comment by nakript

Maybe, stacking mastery instead of crit will be a good option for balance with Might of Malorne

Comment by Arberian021

All talents seem useful for all specs with some exceptions :Touch of Elune :--Balance:Getting Resets on Starfall/Sunfall its a big damage boost for Balance Druids . It can work very well with the Soul of The Forest.

--Feral:Using Moonfire will be a choice to fight against targets which are 30 or 40 yards away. Moonfire will be affected by Nurturing Instict so will deal a medium damage. Works well if combined with Heart of the Wild which grants the druid the power to play in other specialisations.

--Guardian:I think that absorpotion shields are better than healing because shields protect you and you can heal yourself. Shields prevent damage. Preventing is better than healing.

--Resto:This talent is very good in PvE but i wouldnt say the same for PvP because when playing PvP you might not have enough time to land 3 Regrowths thats why i think that Moment of Clarity must last for 2 or 3 casts instead of 5 seconds.

Will of Malfurion :

--Balance:Zenith seems very good to me because its an ability we can use when we want to get Shooting Stars immediately to finish our target .

--Feral:Bloody Thrash seems a very good AoE boost , but it might seem a bit lacky in PvP . In fact it is not. This allows you to keep both Thrash and Rake active on a target allowing you to deal damage,

-Guardian:This talent seems a good defending talent because increases your armor . I hope it is very useful because armor will be more important to tanks in WoD .

--Resto:This talent is very useful if you want to heal your raid or if youwanna heal your team in battlegrounds. But it doesnt seem good in Arenas.

Might of Malorne :

--Balance:I was hoping to see the talent for years because Balance Druids dont have high DPS when they are out of the eclipse . This will work good if Combined with Dream of Cenarius and with Incarnation. The burst is gonna be really high . Be careful from Balance Druids.

--Feral:Savagery seems the best talent to me because it saves your 5 combo points and also saves you 25 energy . You will need it in PvP .

--Guardian:This doesnt seem a good talent to me because reduces the damage of "the next attack you take" . I think it should be "reduces the damage you take for the next 2 or 3 seconds" .

--Resto:OMG. This talent is really OP in PvP and really mana abusive in PvE . If this talent is combined with Soul of The Forest you gonna do big healings with only instants.

I am excpecting changes on these talents. Thank you for reading this small review.

Comment by Connfuzion

I'm disappointed about the what the healers get if I'm to be honest :(

Comment by Swisz

WHAT? Well for arenas a passive savage roar will be a huge problem! A lot of times feral Druids use savage roar to clear combo points and get there instant cast heal when there to far from the target to use ferocious bite. If your targets really far away from you and not in your line of sight are you going to risk death in a high rated arena just for the instant cast heal you need to live? Why not have a 40yd range extra bleed that gains combo points for your savage roar so that you can survive nearly any arena or bg battle, this way you can annoy the shiiit out of an enemy without sacrificing a really useful ability. I think that might of malorne will be the "obvious" choice that all noobs pick so the pro feral Druids with touch of elune can get high ranking even Easier

Comment by asiankami

For all feral druids that think that moonfire will be spammable like it is for casters at 30/100 energy per cast, you are truely a noob.

Also thinking that magic is a bleed is true indication you have never had a decent MMR since magic is quite easily a removable debuff as supposed to a true bleed.

Furthermore dealing 40% more damage passively at all times should cause more wins then having to run like the animal you turn into behind some pole to cast some small heal that wont save you from any class that can gap close or hunters whose pets blink behind you.

Before calling all those other druids noobs check yourself.

I main a mage and have no problems killing druids with their current savage roar. Why don't you focus more on the fact druids can no longer break immobilization by switching form which makes them pretty useless compared to a rogue or warrior.

Comment by Rorfan

I hope Might of Malorne will give us antlers

Comment by Jinkho

I think Might of Malorne for balance (equinox) quite very strong cause they will probably keep using the "give away pve items" focused on Hit + Mastery.

Starfire is at least 15~20% stronger than Wrath, so you will probably change the single target rotation to:

Starsurge > Keep Sunfire and Moonfire > SPAM starfire as filler.

With this you will have 15% + Mastery on ANY arcane or nature spell, which means all spells.

The only CON in this is the delay on 15% haste bonus from Sun to Moon eclipse, cause you will just change this eclipse based on Starsurge procs or casts, and may take a long time, tests have to be done saying if worth it.

If exclude Wrath became the best option, they will much probably nerf this talent, lets wait for my beta, so I can test myself.

Comment by fedas15

An in-depth discussion of the talents from a feral and balance perspective (PvP):

Feral:

Touch of Elune: From what we know at this point in time its effectiveness will mostly be determined by its damage. The range doesn't do much since it's more of a DoT rather than instant damage, signifying its uselessness to spam (please visit for spammable ranged DPS here: Shuriken Toss). The combo point doesn't add much to it either, it's more of a necessity for the energy cost. Spreading this to multiple targets also would be a nightmare because it would constantly reset your current combopoint target unless they add something to negate the combopoint resets (IE existing combopoints switching to your new target, AKA a passive Redirect).

Will of Malfuron: This is a very odd talent, and I doubt it would be useful unless you're hitting multiple targets with it. The reason I say this is because Thrash doesn't grant any combo points and since you can't have this talent and Might of Malorne it would be a nightmare to attempt to keep Savage Roar & Rip up (not to mention early expansion usually means a lower crit chance, resulting in even fewer available combo points).

Might of Malorne: Just thinking back to the days of cata makes me want to auto-grab this talent. It was much easier to put bleeds on targets and ferals were actually able to use maim to stun targets without completely crippling their damage. My feelings aside, believe this talent is the correct choice out of the three. All it really has to compete with is Touch of Elune, and unless it does very good damage or they implement some other mechanic into the works I really just feel like Touch of Elune falls short. The only downside to this talent is the fact that we will no longer be able to use savage roar to force a ranged proc of Predatory Swiftness. Although, with cyclone no longer being affected by this, it's not a big deal.

Feral MVT (most valuable talent) goes to Might of Malorne for simplifying the feral PvP rotation and allowing us to use Maim without nerfing our damage output.

Balance:

Touch of Elune: This talent is an overall DPS increase and goes along well with your burst phases. Usually boomkins run with dot comps (at least I do) and starfall is a very nice helper when it comes to adding even more pressure to their entire team, so having this essentially twice as often is quite strong. It's also an instant cast which means even if cleaves are sitting on you it's still usable.

Will of Malfuron: Now this talent is particularly interesting. However, while interesting it is, we first have to ask ourselves a few questions. How many targets will be ideal to DoT up before channeling this? Since this talent appears to be able to spammable (no CD present) we should make a choice on how many targets is too many targets to DoT before channeling this. Currently MoonfireandSunfire are both 14 seconds long. Lets say our global cooldown is 1.3 seconds after haste. If we apply Moonfire and Sunfire to three targets that's 7.8 seconds of using globals on DoTs. That means by the end of the 6th DoT there will only be 6.2 seconds left on the first DoT you applied. That means it'll basically last just one channel of Zenith (because you'll most likely have starsurge procs once you're done channeling that you'll want to use). While 4X dot damage is very good, I believe there will be many wasted starsurge procs. This might not be a very big deal, maybe you just want crazy dot pressure and don't plan on focusing an enemy. And maybe against wizard cleaves you might be able to sit in the middle and use starsurge procs as you gain them then continue channeling Zenith, but that's obviously risky and can be easily interrupted. Speaking of interrupts, the main concern that I have about this talent is being sat on by melee and being under the constant pressure of interrupts. If any melee is sitting on you it will practically be impossible to channel this, it might even lockout both nature and arcane if you're interrupted. I believe the main play style this would involve is LoSing the enemy team while channeling Zenith, but again, possible wasted starsurge procs. This talent overall would be terrible versus cleave teams, specially since they like to sit on boomkins already (probably more so if you grab this talent).

Might of Malorne: I'm not a fan of this talent. Sure, it extends the duration of an eclipse but many people are forgetting a few things. First of all, outside of an eclipse we have Euphoria, this makes entering an eclipse quite easy, each starsurge will grant 40 out of 100 energy towards the next eclipse. Euphoria combined with Glyph of Omens means it takes 2 starsurges and 2 casts of any CC to enter into the next eclipse. Not very hard. Ignoring Euphoria, we can just use Astral Communion to the next eclipse, taking a measly sum of 4 seconds and allowing us to save a starsurge proc for the next eclipse. Another thing I see people commonly forgetting is that we also gain Nature's Grace at the start of an eclipse; 15% haste is a very nice buff to have while bursting. Taking this talent will effectively reduce the amount of Nature's Grace procs you receive and will reduce the amount of times Starfall's cooldown is reset, the best times for burst.

Balance MVT (most valuable talent) goes to Touch of Elune for the extra burst damage it will add during your burst phases, for being an instant cast, and a good choice against any team comp. Runner-up goes to Will of Malfuron for possibly being useful against wizard teams (prob while LoS'ing).

Comment by Alnair

Touch of Elune :--Balance:I would love Solar and Lunar eclipse states to do fairly equivalent Single and Oligo-target damage and for a long time time now Starfall has prevented that. This talent will allow Starfall to be used at both ends of the rotation. I can see this talent being paired with Soul of the Forest to take advantage of more frequent Eclipse States. It won’t really synergize in any new way with Incarn. or FoN however (unless using Starfall during Celestial Alignment activates both Starfall AND Sunfall, but do we really expect that?).

--Feral:A couple uses: a) In PVE boss fights this will add another timer to track along with Rip, Rake, and Savage Roar, some players LOVE tracking timers (some hate doin so, if you hate tracking timers, use Might of Malorne). b) Pulling ranged targets and runners. This is not a Multi-DoT talent. For Multi-Dot you want Will of Malfurion: Bloody Thrash.

--Guardian:Absorption shields are better than healing because preventing is dmg better than healing dmg. I might pair this with Dream of Cenarius to make up for the self-healing capacity that this talent removes.

--Resto:This talent is very good if you don’t have to move around a lot, a movement-dependent fight (and all PVP) will kill this talent (for movement i recommend either of the other two talents in this tier). But for standing around fights, it will increase mana efficiency. Great at early levels when spirit and mana are preciously rare.

Will of Malfurion :--Balance:Zenith is for Oligo-target cleave fights where multi-DoT is the name of the game. Not so great for movement though…

--Feral:Bloody Thrash is also for Oligo-target cleave fights. This will be my favorite Dungeon and Trash talent, but probably not my favorite Raid-boss talent except in stacked Council fights…

-Guardian:Passive talent! No muss, no fuss. I miss the days when Agi added armor… I would personally favor Gift of Elune for actual Active Mitigation tanking and Might of Malorne for progression tanking…

--Resto:Genesis was added to mitigate the nerf to Wild Mushroom: Bloom a while back, and is meant to be used for mobile/spread healing. This will make mobile/spread healing all that much stronger. If this is for Multi-target burst, then Might of Malfurion is for Single-Target burst.

Might of Malorne :--Balance:Great for sustained DPS, great for Soloing, makes Incarnation less finicky to use (though it doesn’t actually increase its value per se). I imagine when soloing I will use this talent + Dream of Cenarius + Force of Nature together. This talent will reduce the value of Soul of the Forest if they are paired together since both talents essentially use to incompatible methods to achieve the same end (i.e. helping a Moonkin avoid having to cast un-eclipse-powered nukes, therefore i would really never want to to pair those two talents).

--Feral:Great for PVP and great for people who hate complication, great also for soloing… but for PVE min-maxers this talent will have trouble keeping up in value as haste and crit become more plentiful and the relative value of saving a few energy and few CP every 30 seconds becomes less and less, Real Single-Target pros will try to keep up an additional Moonfire DoT (Gift of Elune).

--Guardian:Very tricksy. This ability is meant to allow a Bear to shrug off specific predictable boss attacks (like Impale). Probably the best talent for progression raiding where specific boss abilities would otherwise kill you.

--Resto:Finally I would have a reason to stop using Glyph of Efflorescence (although that glyph may not survive into the next expansion anyway)! Also a good reason to take Soul of the Forest instead of Incarnation or FoN. But that being said, this is really hard on mana, even if great for spot healing. I would probably be too afraid to use this talent unless I totally stacked spirit.

Comment by Fellrik

Blizzard, why have you created such an annoying ability like Savage Roar. Delete this seriously, such a pain in the %$#, we have to save soooo many combos points and energy just to keep our damage and DPS as high as the other damage classes do, soooooo painful... Yes, as a feral, i am planning to use might of malorne.

Comment by voinbobar

From a PVP standing point, I'd take Touch of Elune over Might of Malorne any day. The Predatory Swiftness proc is invaluable imo, even thou it does not affect Cyclone any more.

Comment by Eili

Already in Love with Elune <3

And the other Talent's may let me reconsider to play Cat for a 2nd specc again. I just love cat but that Energy regeneration su.... like hell. At least with the passive savage roar it may become less annoying :D

Comment by Sapphrii

Im liking some of the new Boomkin talents. Hopefully they wont completely scrap them.

Comment by Gudafild

Rdruids with Soul of the Forest and Might of Malorne will have so much burst healing and with the extra haste ur hots will tick faster and in pvp you would be cyclone so much

Comment by Kyroth

I only see Touch of Elune being legit for feral if it gets affected by mastery (bleed dmg increase) which i doubt it will but if it does then ferals on long period fights will be better but saying tht it looks like Will of Malfurion will get nerfed alot as 40% passive dmg increase is OP- but if u use a one button macro then this talent will not be needed as it casts Savage Roar for u at certain times to maintain dps. :D hope they do sort these out to become viable and not stupid as it doesnt work out to me.

Comment by 1stmetalknight

yeah since doge is gone in wod how will the druids tank? agylity, stamina, crit and mastery?...wat will it happen to savage defense?i'm going for avoidance atm...kinda love it...

Comment by Utez

The only way I can see Touch of Elune being worth anything for Feral is if it gets a serious damage boost, becomes affected by AP rather than SP while in cat form, and counts as "bleed" damage to be augmented by Mastery.

Comment by Winneto

I'm going might of malorne for feral and will of malfurion for guardian!

Comment by Kassane

Equinox seems like a very cool talent i want to use it really bad.

Comment by DonPhoexo

Feral: Well, as of first look, Might of Malorne will be ferals no-brainer talent for most fights and Will of Malfurion might be good for Heavy aoe fights. What could be interesting is Touch of Elune, cuz if this moonfire is amplified by mastery, then it could be really good.

I really cant wait for Beta, so we cna test it out.

Comment by Thhanatos

I think that might of malorne will be the talent of choice for boonkins, but that will make them more boring to play with. Since people gonna spam starfire even more. That worries me a little

Comment by Maelwys

Anyone else look at Touch of Elune for Balance and laugh a little? Nobody in their right mind is going to take it.

Comment by Sas148

I think it's funny that they're bringing the Insect Swarm spell back as an option. I missed it.(##RESPBREAK##)16##DELIM##Sas148##DELIM##

Comment by Adabiel

i am glad for pulverize back again since bear hug is completely useless on anything that can't be stunned, unlike other classes' increased damage on them.

Comment by Dalphakans

Druids willl stay with the same problematic of DPS? 2 exp.... And this is the only "spank" caster of game..... WHAT WASTE OF MY TIME - I QUIT of this class

Comment by TholinNothing

Bristling Fur will be the most unused tier talent in the history of Guardian Druids. 3 seconds of activity for a 1 minute CD. Guardian Druids are already great mitigators without this useless talent. 3 seconds of 50% reduced damage is a small window to coordinate the timing on a large boss blast even on a fast computer, so you know slower computer users won't even bother with this talent.

Add in the given that normally you may already have up to a 1sec GCD swirling around when the boss goes to deal the big damage, you will have more downtime trying to time this ability just right by only auto-attacking and hovering your finger over the spell key to successfully make your window of time to reduce the incoming damage. This talent is more trouble than it is worth.

Guardian of Elune or Pulverize will be the talent of choice for Guardians on the Level 100 Talent tier.

Comment by gamer1494

As a Feral,

Things I like:-Getting abilities like glyph of savagery automatically (nobody could ever take utility glyphs while mandatory things like this are available, and some of those utility advantages should have been automatic to begin with)-Being able to cast rejuvenation in cat form, (but where's cyclone?)

Things I don't like:-The problem with feral (especially in pvp) is that it is so hard to maintain. I like the fact that they're TRYING to make savage roar more manageable, but getting one free savage roar on the pull does not make up for the fact that maintaining savage roar consistently causes problems (and is not possible) in an environment where there is cc, kiting, and you are being forced to stop to use utility constantly (especially since cyclone changed). The savagery talent isn't going to fix this, because it would be an outright damage loss to take it. Even with how ridiculous it is to maintain in pvp (along with rip) it is still going to be better to take one of the talents that's actually giving you more damage (and burst). The problem is that savage roar needs to be more MANAGEABLE all around, not to have more gimmicks like glyph of savagery, that just make it slightly less bad when you fail to maintain it.

-The second problem is a lack of on-demand damage for burst. For instance, another class may pop a cd at an opportune time and hit a few, large attacks and that = burst. For feral there is no such thing, you simply get the biggest bleeds you can during a proc, and at best spam small-time direct damage like mangle or shred (which hit for a third of an ice lance, to put things on scale). Over a 20 second period that may equate to as much damage as the mage who spammed icelance (with frozen orb, images, bomb and icicle), but the difference is his ice lance spam only took 3 seconds and ours took 20 seconds of bleeds ticking and spamming small-time direct damage.... incarnation is sub-par for this because you run out of energy and may lose bleed uptime or better yet your 40% damage increase from savage roar because ravage costs so much (even with berserk) and incarnation requires a GCD which frankly is just annoying

-Lastly, feral cc keeps getting hit with the most massive nerf bat I have ever seen and it is downright disturbing. Lets actually consider what its like getting off a cyclone in an arena as a feral druid given the facts: Cyclone has a 20 yard range, has a 1.5 second cast, has no pushback protection (which means a 3 second cast if your getting hit), and shifts us out of cat form. I'm not going to pick this apart bit by bit because I have already ranted A LOT, so I will just say that cyclone in this form for a feral druid is nigh impossible to actually use in an arena. The one situation it is occasionally useable is if all of your opponents are already controlled and within 30 yards, and even then it is a 3 second loss of uptime due to the short range and the shift back into cat form..... ABSURD!

No other class puts up with such insanity why does feral? It's just senseless. I do arenas in feral and sometimes feel like the only thing I CAN do is tunnel vision a target to add my significant damage pressure and that's the only thing I am able to contribute. And it's not hard to derail a rotation that requires the constant uptime of two combo point finishers like savage roar and rip. And because of the state of cyclone we can't contribute much cc unless we have absolute impunity and the off-target is incompetent enough to sit in range and in los. I am not the best feral but I have been doing arena with it for 3 years and have 2k exp in all brackets, and I honestly don't know how the 2200+ ferals manage anymore (not that there are very many left).

Comment by gamer1494

I can already tell you that the hype over the savage roar passive is over-rated. Savage roar might be annoying and complicated at times, but being able to get off a few more ferocious bites over the course of a fight is not going to out-rank getting another dot or even the thrash-rake in dps.

Even in pvp it would be difficult to justify taking the passive over an actual increase in damage and more importantly burst-potential. And that is not something I say lightly because ever since MOP came out savage roar has single-handedly annoyed the piss out of me in pvp. It needs to be more manageable, but it doesn't need another gimmick like glyph of savagery that just makes it slightly less sh***y when you fail to maintain it.

But we will see, the overall changes of WOD might result in the talent being significant enough to justify. Regardless, it is a blatantly lazy way to address the issue savage roar has caused since they changed it in MOP. They are either genuinely unsure of a way to make feral better (as in less-inconvenient) or they just don't care anymore.

Comment by Tahrann

I'm going to try to do some energy math on Bloody Thrash and Savagery for Ferals:

(Assuming no clearcasting procs and 2 of all CP generating attacks crit)

So for Bloody Thrash we get two dots applied at once for 50 energy: Rake for 15 seconds (which normally costs 35 energy) and Thrash for 15 seconds that will still yield a CP on main target upon use (not to mention is an AOE ability applying 2 dots on all targets). The big problem is that this uses 15 more energy for using 2 abilities at once (both do a significant amount of DPS) that will only generate 1-2 CPs and you have to keep it up on target <15 seconds for the most effect. This means you are using (50 + 40*2 + 30 = 160 en)+ (50 + 40*2 + 25 = 155 en or 40*3 + 25 = 155 en) + (if Rip and Rake/Thrash are still up = 180 en] if not ) = 160 + 155 + 180 = 495 en or 160 + 155 + 190 = 505 en (if you need to reapply Rake/Thrash) all before next Rip apply rotation.

Picking Savagery will make it so that you never have to use SR in or out of combat, so you are keeping 25 energy for something else you could need it on and 1-5 CPs (hopefully 5) that could be used on FB, Rip, or even Maim if you needed that extra interrupt. The problem with this is the fact that we only have two major CP dumps which are FB and Rip, and FB is only at full power when you have 60 energy. So say you use Rake and Shred with Rip at near full time, you still have to wait for enough energy to use a full powered FB at 60 energy to actually do some DPS. So you might be able to squeeze one or 2 FBs into your rotation before having to reapply rip. Which means you are using ( x 2 =) 350 energy until your next Rip usage for maximum DPS output. So (25 + 40*2 + 25 = 130 en) + ( x 2 = 360 or + ( + = 345 en) = 490 en or 475 en (with reapplication or Rake) until next Rip apply without adding Thrash into the rotation at all.

So the Bloody Thrash rotation using 505 (at worst with reapplication or Rake/ Thrash) energy for a full rotation (assuming Rip is still up) vs. 475 (with the previous still assumed and a reapplication of Rake) energy for a full rotation using Savagery. So you are sacrificing 30 energy (at worst) for what I am hoping is more DPS due to bleed ticks vs. hard damage. Sorry I did not use any math for how hard these abilities will hit, but baseline data might be changing soon so it will be inaccurate anyway.

This is also hoping I did not butcher the math too terribly so please let me know if I missed something and add any corrections so I am not messing up anyone in the future. Also I am sorry for how cluttered this is.

Comment by Fir3shadow

I'm surprised there aren't a lot more people mentioning the synergy between Moment of Clarity and Incarnation: Tree of Life.

Omen of Clarity is proc'ed by Lifebloom (which can be applied to multiple targets during Tree of Life) and can now last 5 seconds (similar to the healing legendary meta gem).

Combined with Tree of Life's instant cast Regrowth (which is affected by Omen of Clarity, making it free) and Regrowth's glyph (which removes the HoT in return for giving it a 100% critical chance), you can throw single stacks of Lifebloom on a bunch of people and practically just sit there and spam instant free Regrowths with a 100% critical chance for 30 seconds. Or you can run around since, you know, it's an instant cast. Suppose it's a good thing druids won't be able to double dip with the legendary meta gem. (Meta gems being removed and all)

Sure, the above situation can only be used every so often, but hey, if they expand the number of spells that is affected by Omen of Clarity (imagine if Omen of Clarity worked on Rejuvenation), it's usefulness would be significant, especially in the beginning of the gearing process, when mana regeneration is much lower.

Comment by Tankingatm

Feral pvp should not use savagery because the chance to score an instant proc of the ability without being near an enemy prob saved too many feral lives

Comment by Gumpyii

When you combine the effects of the Glyph Travel with Feline Swiftness your Travel Form is faster than your mount!Travel Form 40%+Glyph 60%+Talent 15%=115 while the normal ground mount is only at 100% extra speed.

Comment by konsharpahuvudet

Erh. Right. So how bloody fast are Night Elf Cats going to be exactly? This looks hilarious and absurd. 15% bonus from Feline Swiftness, 25% from Cat Form + 5% from Enhanced Cat Form (perk) + 2% from Quickness, the new Night Elf Racial Bonus. Also, the 25% buff from cat form (and i'm guessing the extra 5% perk as well) are cumulative, so surely its even more than 15 + 25 + 5 + 2, i.e roughly 47%? That is insane. Or have I misunderstood something here?

Comment by ignis86

VS

Since the updated tips i believe i will keep Savage Roar in my rotation and simply get BT.

Reasoning:

I like using a 5cp SR to proc a free healing touch while running away if needed.Thrash will APPLY rake (used to say spread meaning you had to apply rake first) and award a CP if hits your current combo target. So i get to keep the free healing ability while i need to not be in melee AND i can pull rake out of my rotation.

Comment by lunersa

I'm surprised to see not many comments on the glyph of savagery and lunar inspiration, you'll still be able to cast savage roar while kiting for instant heal and while kiting with lunar inspiration you'll be able to build up combo points, do damage and get instant casts off those combo points.

Comment by magicottermew

It's really insulting to see Insect Swarm brought back as such a piece of crap spell.

Why in the hell would they add a cast time to what would have been an amazing spell? Or if you're going to have a cast time, let us use the spell in an Eclipse! That might make up for the time wasted casting it.

Comment by scourge2

Cookie Cutter Build Much?Tier 15 Casting specs (pvp and pve sets alike) mainly pick Displacer Beast and fewer Feline Swiftness. Casting specs (pvp and pve sets alike) only pick Wild Charge 4.52% of the time over the other talents.Tier 15 Meleeing specs (pvp and pve sets alike) mainly pick Wild Charge and fewer Displacer Beast. Meleeing specs (pvp and pve sets alike) only pick Feline Swiftness 18.97% of the time over the other talents.Tier 30 Casting specs (pvp and pve sets alike) mainly pick Ysera's Gift and fewer Cenarion Ward. Casting specs (pvp and pve sets alike) only pick Renewal 4.19% of the time over the other talents.Tier 30 Meleeing specs (pvp and pve specs alike) mainly pick Ysera's Gift and rarely Renewal. Meleeing specs (pvp and pve sets alike) only pick Cenarion Ward 9.11% of the time over the other talents.Tier 45 is ridiculous, ALL specs (pvp and pve sets alike) pick Typhoon 89.38% of the time over the other talents.Tiers 60 and 75 have a variety of choice.Tier 90 ALL specs (pvp and pve minus Feral pve-which usually picks Dream of Cenarius) mainly pick Heart of the Wild and even fewer Nature's Virgil.Tier 100 will be interesting to see what will happen on live.

Comment by konsharpahuvudet

How come nobody has commented on Pulverize yet? Surely this is a typo. Okay, so it consumes 3 stacks of Lacerate, well thats a shame, because it takes a while to build up 3 stacks, what with the 3 sec CD. Oh no wait, it isn't! Lacerate doesn't have a CD any more. Well, its bleeds proc Mangle, oh no wait, no they don't, but the spell does! But they cost rage, no, wait they GIVE you 10 rage. Okay, so three lacerates is 30 rage, and a Pulverize grants you 30 additional rage. Apart from dealing massive damage it also reduces your damage taken by 20%. Okay, so massive damage, generates rage and reduces damage taken. Are you having a !@#$ing laugh? Having less than 100% uptime of Savage Defence is going to be damn near impossible, not to mention the fact that the Perked Tooth and Claw proc doesn't make Maul cost rage any more. Thrash costs no rage and can reset Mangle, Lacerate gives you rage and can reset Mangle and Maul doesn't even cost you rage when it has any use? So apart from Savage defence, the only thing that rage will be spent on is on rage-dumping Maul then I guess? I suspect (note the sarcasm) that Pulverize will get redesigned ever so slightly. Apart form anything else, it's just blatantly better than any other choice in this tier, both offensively and defensively.

Comment by RedEnigma

Equinox looks very good but the Balance perks Enhanced Storms and Enhanced Starsurge specifically denote that they are for generating Solar/Lunar Power. Reaching 100 and choosing Equinox appears to effectively negate two perks. I know this isn't final but I would like to have a use for all my perks no matter the talent I choose.

Comment by admielke

All Druids but Guardian should go for the third level 100 talent. Always getting the damage bonus from Eclipses, not needing to constantly have Savagery up, and being able to practically spam Swiftmend. All are pretty over powered.

Guardian Druids must get the first one, but the second could be great for non-physical-only boss fights.

You may ask why:Insect Swarm :Generates Lunar or Solar Power and also deals damage. This makes the process of entering to the next eclipse faster and the most important it DEALS DAMAGE. So u get a faster eclipse and more damage. When you are on 1vs1 combat this ability may lack a little bit but is still good. If you are in a BG and you wanna get max DPS you can do this: Use Moonfire,Sunfire and Insect Swarm on all targets and your damage will be higher. Then you can wait to get the shooting stars to use the Starsurge on your enemies. A very good talent, i will probably go with this or with Equinox.

Equinox:I was very very happy when this talent was released because druids are almost useless without eclipse. This talent keeps your damage higher. It is good when fighting on 1vs1 but it is not that good when fighting against multiple enemies because the best talent to fight against multiple enemies is Insect Swarm (explained above) followed by Sunfall. U get a constant damage increase but this makes the Soul of The Forest talent useless, but not 100% useless because u can still get the haste increase buff.

Sunfall :A very good talent. This makes the process of switching eclipses more beneficiary because u get a powerful ability each time u enter an eclipse. Very good for raiding.

So we got a constant damage increase talent : Equinox ; a damage dealing talent which makes the process of switching eclipses faster: Insect Swarm; and a talent which empowers your Starfall and makes your eclipse more beneficiary: Sunfall .

Comment by ejlejl

I liked savage roar.

Comment by Aquaila

Sunfall sounds really cool although i don't know how to play a druid properly

Comment by Thesmileyface

Finally feral and guardian druids can have some healing! :DD

Comment by Tonst3r

Idk what I'm more psyched for:

No CD Swiftmend, double rejuvs,

or

NO SAVAGE ROAR! FINALLY!

EDIT: I keep seeing posts about the Elune for Resto...

I guess i'm the only arena junkie here looking for as many instant-casts as possible :X

Comment by ignis86

Bloodtalons: Casting Healing Touch causes your next two melee abilities to deal 30% additional damage.This just ticks me off, its RECYCLING an old talent that i didnt like in the freakin first place! Feral is hard enough without having another "finisher" to weave in. You are only going to cast HT when it procs free after a 5cp finisher so its something you will have to do every time you finish a 5cp ability. I find it BOGUS that they are doing this.

Comment by jrambrose

Bloodtalons seems like it was put in to appease the current generation who like the advanced Feral rotation. I'm assuming Bloody Thrash was either way to powerful or was being used for ST, which I'm guessing is not what Blizzard wanted. Also, consider that DoT snap shotting is a thing of the past, so Bloodtalons will lose a significant amount of it's usefulness.

People are over looking that Savagery will not only give you additional bites, but is also an additional 5% increase from the current Roar. Simplifying the rotation is an added perk. Even though Blizzard intends for these talents to be "roughly" equal, one will undoubtedly sim higher than the other, but at least the choice is compelling.

LI (Lazor kitteh) is troublesome in that it does NOT benefit from our mastery as far as I can tell. Knowing that Blizzard intends for the tree to be balanced, I suspect the AP scaling will be quite good on this ability for it to be considered worth while. It also has the nice benefit of being both ranged AND a DoT for those pesky fights where melee sits with their thumb up their rear (and you know they are coming....).

I admit, not *quite* as impressive as I was hoping for, but not a total wash either.

Comment by Spitzio

It's too bad they replaced Insect Swarm with Stellar Flare I was really looking forward to Insect Swarm being a classic move and all. I always enjoyed putting a bunch of stinging and biting insects on a target and watch it chew them down, don't know what this new spell would look like but I think I would prefer Insect Swarm but the mechanics of Stellar Flare could still be kept but the wording changed to say it generates power either way that benefits the druid the most and since insects are more active between darkness and full daylight the insects do more damage when lunar and solar power are balanced, so basically it is the same spell while also keeping a move that at least I have been waiting to have back for a while.

Comment by Yuiopy

Savagery is definitely required for feral. There isn't a way around it.

Comment by Wrathere

Stellar flare gonna be hella cool.

Comment by Hyooga

As a Feral Druid, i'm kind of disappointed by the new talent row.Lunar Inspiration does not seem viable in any way, considering how energy hungry Ferals are, i wouldn't want to waste 30 energy for a combo point and very little damage.Bloodtalons.... you literally just took Dream of Cenarius and split it in half. DoC isn't that good right now either, so that's 2 non-viable talents.

However Savagery is VERY welcome.VERY VERY VERY welcome.Thank you blizzard.

Comment by wiresimpson

As a bear tank wish we had more of a aoe taunt like other tank classes how about devs help a bear out no swipe hurts

Comment by Grumbled

this is the best

Comment by Grumbled

This is ok?Or is a bad connection?

Comment by Alkiphron

Savage roar being removed does sound like a blessing, but I'm worried about the rePURRcussions (I couldn't stop myself). Feral's amazing DPS was offset by its complicated system going about said DPS. With one of the biggest obstacles, Savage Roar, out of the way, I can't help but feel like ferals won't be as jaw dropping anymore. Some of you might not understand what I'm saying, so before you hit that downrate button:

Difficulty to master is in proportion to the DPS feral can churn out

Easier it is to DPS, the less DPS feral can bring to the table. Or that's what I think will happen in WoD

Comment by thoor81

Are you kidding us? talents 75and 100 have nothing to do with the feral druid. Do you think to strengthen the feral or are creating an alternative to restoration?Why have you removed "Thrash Also now spreads to other damaged rake enemies"?sorry for my bad english :)

Comment by konsharpahuvudet

Wow now hold on just a damn minute! Claws of Shirvallah instead of Savagery? If there was one thing everyone was happy about, it was the removal of Savage Roar, and now they're removing the talent? Also, can anyone make sense of this talent? What do you mean "make use of all non-damaging druid spells while in cat form"? Okay, so healing spells then? But what do they mean by ALL spells? Because if they mean all healing spells available as feral druids, then this talent is useless since healing touch is already usable in cat form and rejuvenation will be too! So unless they're keen giving cats Wild Growth or something, all this talent really means is "5% versatility and casting healing touch without the proc won't break cat form". I'm so confused.

Comment by Vatherian

For Feral raiding: I'm wondering if you could do some pretty good dps with decent off healing when energy is low. Claws of Shirvallah (versitility, dmg + heal increase). Dream of Cenarius (+20% for rejuv & healing touch) + heals you when you heal someone else. Perks for healing touch +20%. Both healing spells castable while in Shirvallah but only would use healing touch in conjunction with Preditory Swiftness (increase healing touch by 50% more) They are increasing mana regeneration by 100% but they are removing Leader of the Pack's ability to give you 8% of mana back on crit with 6 second cooldown. Not sure how this will balance out. Who knows, i might have to add a few pieces with spirit to make it work. If it came to that, I hope it wouldn't sacrifice too much dps. This might add some some nice depth of gameplay. I would love to test this out in the beta.

Comment by bahhael

so now what do level 90 feral druids choose for there talents....all 3 now are just disappointing, yet another class blizzard killed for me, fist one was blood death knights now feral druids

Comment by vimmie07

So lets break out the Maths

Rejuvenation by itself last 12 seconds. with the perk 15 seconds that means that...

3000% of 12s = 360s = 6 minutes

and

3000% of 15s = 450s = 7.5 minutes

Applied to two targets you have a total of 6/7.5 minutes of period healing ticking every 3 seconds that means that you will effectively receive

360/3 = 120 ticks for the full duration. or450/3 = 150 ticks for the full duration.

This leaves you with240 ticks for a 6 minute duration (2 ticks every 3 seconds)300 ticks for a 7.5 minute duration (2 ticks every 3 seconds)

Now this leaves you with a very long amount of dots that you can put onto your entire raid and don't have to worry about it expiring anytime soon.

P.S. This Skills Amount of ticks can also be increased by a person's haste.

TLDR:

240/300 ticks for a 6/7.5 minute duration with 2 ticks that go off every 3 seconds

Comment by JPinhey

All in all, the current feral talents aren't bad. Dream of Cenarius and Bloodtalons are kinda crap, just divided the current Dream of Cenarius to two spells, which seems like a waste. Moonfire in cat form is meh. Claws of Shirvallah is pretty good, not as much of a dps ability as most of the other 100 talents, but the shapeshift is sick, I'm just wondering if it'll interact with Burning Seeds at all. Fiery werecat would be pretty awesome to be honest.

Comment by kertic

youtube. com/watch?v=UMqPRPaY1R8

^^^^^^^^^^I think we know what inspired the claws of shirvallah talent

Comment by konsharpahuvudet

Honestly, what i'd like to see is Lunar Inspirations and Claws of Shirvallah lumped into the same talent and make room for an aoe-based talent for ferals. If this combined talent is too OP, then they could fiddle with how much versatility they get to make it reasonable, because honestly, they both strike me as PvP talents. A lot of classes have things they can fiddle around with to increase their aoe, either through talents, glyphs or both. I can see how Thrash applying rake would've been stupidly OP on its own, but if for example you could have your combo points to apply it, as a finisher, like two targets per combo point or something. Feral aoeing is a bit stale atm and I get a bit annoyed that there isn't really anything to spend your combo points on in aoe packs, if you already have savage roar up.

Comment by Kaerfemagsh

Why the !@#$ did they get rid of the feral talent to make savage roar passive, $%^& you blizzard!

Comment by Kartoffel25

Claws of Shirvallah, huh?

ThunderCats, hooooo!

Comment by Akula1

Dream of Cenarius must increase Wrath damage a LOT more (and maybe give us some other balance spell), so maybe Resto Druids can solo using their main spec. Changing all the time is ultra boring, and makes you feel weak cause you have "wrong"gear (spirit stuff) if you're forced into balance to do something.

Comment by Emounicorn

No swipe on Guardians? That is a rancid idea. It's you main filler spell between mangle cd/proc and thrash. Plus if you have multiple mobs you get X number of extra Mangle procs off it since its an AoE and can crtit readily well. Terrible, terrible decision. We need swipe, bad. The AoE as it stands basically be laughable, no matter which of those talents you chose or not.

Comment by Mesor

Overpowered class with awsome "balance".

Comment by Alarien

At least on the day I'm looking (Sept. 9th, 2014) this talent calculator must be inaccurate. For me it is showing that all level 60 talents and all level 100 talents are Balance only. All six talents say "requires Druid (Balance)" which obviously is incorrect.

Comment by kevincuomo

Savage Roar is back now ? NoOOOooooOoooOOooooSay it isn't so!

Comment by nihilist1974

I hate it that they make it so annoying to level a guardian druid by making us wait untill level 28 to get thrash and level 38 to get lacerate. Give us lacerate at level 15 so that we can tab target mobs and apply the lacerate dot to them. Same prot warrior. Give us devestate at level 15 so that we can tab target the mob and apply devestate to them. Makes me not want to level a tank spec untill those levels. The game needs to encourage more people to want to tank at level levels, not discourage.

Comment by vnedelcu

you have serious problems with balancing feral druids. they deal a lot of dmg and they have to much healing.

Comment by vnedelcu

omg! reduce the power of feral druids!

Comment by vnedelcu

feral druids are so unbalanced right now.. they heal from 20% health up to full in 2-3 seconds and they deal a bunch of dmg. their bleeds and roots are very annoying and ferocious bite hits harder than an obliterare. gj blizz

Comment by Pruberry

It's a real shame about the exclusive minor glyphs. I'd love to have stars + flapping or travel + cheetah. But it's always been difficult to choose for a druid, never able to make room for orca :(

Comment by Kaerfemagsh

Why can't they just get rid of astral communion? it's even dumber here than it is now

Comment by Spartonian

For Balance Druids in the Beta and who've tested the level 100 talents, what are/were your impressions of them?

Comment by konsharpahuvudet

Could someone please explain to me how Guardian of Elune (Guardian) works? Yeah, Okay, 100% for 3 seconds, I get that part, its the bit underneath that I don't understand: " Additionally, the recharge time on Savage Defense is now reduced by your base dodge change percentage."

Have I completely missed something? How does one increase their base dodge? The stat "dodge" is gone, and I thought Agility now only increases AP. Have I missed something here?

Comments

Comment by ThunderGrim

I'm really looking forward to see how the mechanics will be put on screen. For hunters, tha bola shot should be so awesome to fire at your opponent! I hope it will appeal as awesome as the rest of the introduced features.

Comment by HaiskaDude

Seem intresting, definetly want to try this out.

Comment by ArceusRoolz

Looks very interesting, I feel I'd go for Bola Shot for MM, as having a tanking pet and being able to move and use SS is too valuable, but With or Without You looks good for BM.

Comment by furianfan2

Bola shot sounds really cool..can't wait !

Comment by Gunstrong907

*Edited for new talents*My opinions of the new talents:

Exotic Munitions-This can be a powerful talent for AoE and will most likely be best for survival in any situation with some competition from Lone Wolf. The nature damage from the Poison Ammo (the "single-target" munition), the fire damage from the Incendiary Ammo (AoE munition), and the frost damage from the Frozen Ammo (slow munition) will benefit from survival mastery. It will also most likely be the best PvP talent (Frozen Ammo) with the only competition being from Lone Wolf. ATM Frozen does the most single target damage which i believe is a tuning issue they will address later.

Focusing Shot-Due to not being able to move while casting this spell, I doubt this will ever be used in PvP and even in PvE I can only see Marksmanship using this talent since Versatility is overwhelmingly the best for BM and Survival wont get a mastery benefit. Since this talent does ~120% physical damage as opposed to the ~33% physical damage Steady Shot does with a 1 second longer cast time, you could theoretically get more damage out of this in the manner of being able to get more haste and in turn more auto-attack damage before hitting the haste cap. But it can also make the Marksmanship rotation VERY BORING (AiS->CS->FS->AiS->FS->ZZzzz...) and can easily cause you to over cap your focus. Don't get me wrong, this is a VERY LARGE amount of damage compared to the other shots and might be worth taking with higher levels of haste. Overall I believe this to be an interesting talent that would become rewarding with practice, but that is if high mobility is not a requisite in a fight.

Versatility/Lone Wolf-I've been waiting for this talent since locks got a talent similar to this.Overwhelmingly the best talent for BM, hands down. The prospect of that 35% DAMAGE INCREASE makes this talent superior alone, not even considering that your pet would have an AoE spell outside of Beast Cleave. With the freedom to change your pets spec, you could use certain specs for different fights (I.E. Ferocity for normal fights, Tenacity for fights that require constant switching w/ charge, and cunning in some situations) but I see the free instant rez of Ferocity pulling ahead in most situations. But that 25% increase for your pets next attack may be nice and your pet rez isn't very long at all and may make Tenacity even more viable. Also this talent makes a great single target talent for the other specs, since your pet already does most of your damage, not even considering the DPS loss when your pet is not attacking (like when hes changing target or on his way to the boss). A point that has been brought up that I did not acknowledge at the time was concerning my WoL showing how my pet does slightly more than 50% of my damage (see comment section for WoL link). It was regarding that a lot of the damage my pet did came from Kill Command and was then followed by a quite interesting question: Does Combat Experience affect your pets KC? The answer is YES IT DOES, after testing this on the beta I can say that Versatility will be the best out of the three for BM in any situation.

Overall, these talents are amazing and get my seal of approval! I would take Versatility as BM 100% of the time, I would take Exotic Munitions or Lone Wolf as Survival, and for Marksmanship it would depend on the situation and weather or not Focusing Shot performs well.Any Questions:Gunstrong - US Korgath http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/korgath/Gunstrong/advanced

Comment by Schelde

Ohh My God yes! I've been waiting sooo long for some reasonable way to get rit of the pet, and With or Without You provides that ability. I'm so excited about it!I just so hope they address the need for a replacement for Masters Call the pet ability ! :)

Comment by sihar

WoWY looks to be incredibly strong for BM hunters and though I've not raided as anything but BM in a long while, I like how Bola Shot fits into the SV playstyle. I look forward to seeing the theorycrafting to come.

Comment by Marbash

The "With or Without you" seems like an awesome talent for the Beast Mastery hunters out there!

Comment by reprieve

Bola Shot would be a great AoE addition for MM and SV hunters. Would definitely try out With or Without You for all three specs. I just hope they up the damage increase for the MM and SV specs. Now we don't have to rely on our pets heavily.

Comment by Deathwisher

Seems like Blizzard is really listening to everyone and their ideas for this upcoming expansion. Lots of good ideas have been set into motion. With or Without You seems to be Blizzard's way of giving people the ranger class many have asked for.

Comment by nurseferatu

I am seeing Blink strike back - please tell me this is going to happen! *Edit - I should say it is not showing up here as passive any longer, and the passive version is really frustrating in trying to trigger with other abilities versus just sending in my pet with an active button.

Comment by Adalpha

Torn between Bola shot and With or Without your for hunters....I don't care for snipe since you cannot move while casting it. Thats the only downside to the lvl 100 talent that I see. Otherwise the hunter one looks good to me!

Comment by phantomlance

These new hunter talents look fun to use. I know for sure I'll be looking into trying out snipe and With or Without you.

Comment by sapssey

I agree with everybody when they say with our without you is the necessary for BM hunters but then MM and survival still have great choices.bola shot is amazing but I think a petless marksman could work too.I love how versatile the new talents are.

Comment by james2445p

I would have to say the Bola Shot and the With or Without You would be my default choices depending on my spec. Snipe just doesn't seem that appealing to me. I love the fact that I can do any of my abilities on the move and the thought of going back to a shot that I have to stand and cast just makes me nauseous.

Comment by enterthewild

with or without you looks awesome. now what new pet will be available.

Comment by Zanzari

With or Without You seems very interesting. Th thing you'll need to remember is that it limits your choices in the lower level talents. It would be a waste to take Dire Beast or Lynx Rush for example if you don't have a pet.

Comment by Cherryflava

Mobility has been my number one advantage in a hunter and snipe would simply take that away and I can't imagine going around without a pet by my side with SV being my favorite spec making Bola shot my go to talent I guess. Can't wait for beta so I can try them all though :)

Comment by Scaletta

With or Without You is an amazing talent! I was just thinking about it few weeks ago while trying to find Loque'nahak. I thought: 'F***ing waste of time! I wish I could go without a pet and still do decent damage...' and now my wish came true! (and probably the wish of many other hunters). I don't really play Survival (my off-spec) but with this new way of playing my favorite class is really interesting and I will go Surv more often now!

Bola Shot would be my pick for Beast Mastery! I leveled with Marksmanship because it was really overpowered under level 60s, but then stopping to cast Aimed Shot got really boring for me. I turned full BM because I wanted more movement and I never changed since then!

Snipe... eh, like I said Marksmanship got boring, so this talent will surely be boring to me also.

Comment by miniwidge

bola shot replacing arcane? So will we be able to do this one over & over with the same effect happening each time? Or will it happen once and then revert to arcane shot until a cd is over? I'm not sure how this works, but it looks pretty decent.

Comment by PWOMatrix

Definitely taking With or Without You for Beast Mastery. Love the incorporation of those talents from the other 2 specs. I adore pets. I hate (really, really can't say that enough) the pet-less thing for the other 2 specs.

Comment by BMHunterMain

With or Without You looks amazing for BM DPS wise, I would suspect that unless the bolas have some snare effect that isn't mentioned... or maybe even if they do... this is going to be the go-to talent for virtually all BM Hunters. If these abilities remain unchanged (which won't happen), I would think I'd use Bola Shot a handful of times when it has some situational advantage and WoWY the rest of the time. While I certainly won't mind getting a huge passive boost to DPS and these great new off-spec auto-cast pet abilities, it isn't very interesting at all.

So long as the class/spec wouldn't suffer DPS wise, I would have much preferred a powerful cooldown where I got to fight as my pet while the Hunter NPC got controlled by AI... maybe given some flat armor increase and set to autocast a few different shots while I see through the pet's eyes and control its action and movement, and play in a new and interesting way. Jump back into "my own" body with an 80% full focus bar after a set time period has elapsed, or after some rage-type resource was expended, or at will (if the Hunter is in trouble). Or a "Tame Humanoids" ability... or something like a stronger version of direbeast; another summon. Possibly a living beehive to shake up and chuck at enemies as an additional DoT, or even a something like having a second pet fighting alongside the first if they don't want to give us bursty DPS (doing only a fraction of the damage, not taunting or anything complex). What I am saying is that WoWY sounds so OP that there really isn't a choice, and while it is nice, it isn't one bit interesting, creative, or novel. Hunter may be a really fun class to play and the single most epic class for leveling and (arguably) soloing, but it is also among the most neglected and deserves new talents that are actually something new, and not just passive DPS boosts.

How about letting us stitch a couple pets together with our leatherworking skill at the new crafting workshops, creating a pet giving the buffs and having the special abilities of both? Graft Skoll's head onto a corehound body, resulting in a slightly stronger pet that gives +3000 Mastery and a heal + Blood Lust and the cast time debuff... now that would be interesting. And if they really have to be lazy about it and insist on only tweaking existing code to develop the level 100 talents, at least take something from another class! I would love to be able to jump into some kind of beasty ascendant form where Arcane Shot gets empowered into ARCANE LAZOR, jumps to two additional mobs and shoots from the tips of my foot-long fingers.

Comment by Saurisa

I agree with everyone that is saying that With or Without you is best for a BM Hunter.

I kind of like the idea of the "Lone Wolf" passive ability. I may end up doing a second hunter just to have a MM without a pet.

Comment by KesBul

Why is it when I picture Bola shot in a BG, I picture it wrapping around a Rogue's legs, them falling on their face and blowing up. The power of positive thinking.

Comment by Lokkni

Isn't bolo shot kind of/sort of how the old explosive shot used to work? Not complaining mind you. I like more AOE/Cleve type abilities.

Comment by Draintwo

These talents make me so happy. With or Without You provided it stays as is will probably make me the happiest I've ever been as a hunter. I've wanted to be able to play a ranged physical damage dealing class that didn't use a pet for the longest time and now I'll be able to!

Comment by Menardis

Snipe: Meh. A niche talent for those fights where you need to stand still and burn something down, very fast. Boring and lackluster for a level 100 ability.

Bola Shot: Sounds like a cool ability to use............ until you remember that this was how Exploding Shot was originally designed! Lazy rehashed design, check. Replaces normal and frequently used attack (AS), check. Does AE damage even when you don't want it to but other talents are crap for PvP / Arena, check.

With or Without You:

This talent makes no sense. Not only does it basically tell me, as a Hunter, to be BM the whole expansion for PvP AND PvE because of how OP it is, but after

A

HUNDRED

LEVELS

OF

TRUSTING

WATERY

DOLEFUL

PET

EYES

you basically tell them to bugger off for 30% more damage. Where's the attachment, the sentimentality or the soul and feel of the class? Cruel talent to place at 100.

If I wanted a ranged petless class I would play my Warlock, Mage, Shaman, Priest... or a Rogue with Shuriken Toss.

Generally meh so far guys....

Comment by wuggums47

With or without you sounds like the best for beastmaster. There's no way you can beat all those abilities and extra damage. For Marksmanship and Survival I would go with Bola Shot, as it is simply better than Arcane shot. Snipe sounds useful, but it just doesn't compare to the other two.

Comment by Metrognome

I have a hard time seeing anyone picking snipe, because the movement capability of steady shot is too valuable. With bola, it replaces arcane shot, but it costs more focus, and i don't think that the 30 focus is worth it. With or without you sounds like a cool one, but I agree with Menardis. "100 levels of trusting, watery, doleful pet eyes just so you can tell them to bugger off for 30% increased damage..." Lorewise i don't like this talent, but it makes sense in terms of combat.

Comment by Oups

Well I am looking forward to try out different specs but so far I am sure I would be gonna stay BM "With or Without You"

Comment by rangerslythe

i was saying a while ago to a friend that a viable Petless hunter spec should totally be doable.. this is close! but i think it could be better... somehow

Comment by bitemygold

I'm on the very sparse side of liking the idea of a pet-less hunter, but choosing With or Without You as a Non-BM Hunter immediately makes talents such as Spirit Bond, Blink Strikes and Lynx Rush entirely useless. Additionally, you would automatically benefit less from Exhilaration and Fervor. I myself don't make use of most of these talents at this time.

If Blizzard goes through with making With or Without You a "Go away Fluffy, I got this." talent for Marksmanship and Survival, then they should add some talent interactions between the Lone Wolf effect of With or Without You and the talents that rely on / benefit the pet.

An idea for each could be:Lone Wolf - Exhilaration: Heals you for 30% of your maximum health, and an additional 1% health every second for 10seconds.

Lone Wolf - Spirit Bond: You now regenerate 3% of your health every 2 seconds at all times.

If interactions between With or Without You and these other talents were implemented, I could see these talents experiencing much more use and a little less hate on With or Without You for non-BM hunters.

(A few changes made based on feedback in replies. Thanks for your time all.)

Comment by boneshooter

looks great so far but snipe and bola shot seem stupid bliz can come up with something much more exciting and multi-functional than that

Comment by Gomo

PvP perspective:

Bola Shot - Awesome ability but at same time tricky to use due to AoE damage & CC breaking (example: arena)Snipe - Great focus generating ability, but then again.. not being able to move while casting makes it bad.With or Without you - Useless for MM & SV (you should ALWAYS have your pet <up>), but great for BM.

Comment by gcallen

I don't think reaching level 15 offers the new hunter any choice in the column they pick. All three are just small changes for when disengage is used. I seldom, if ever, used disengage at that level so reaching level 15 would not give me any bonus to the game at all. The other levels give the player real choices in how they will play the game. For example, reaching level 45 offers an instant heal, increased damage or a passive heal. These will affect the way the game is played. Reaching level 15 should give the new hunter clear differences in the choice that has to be made rather than just a small difference in what happens after Disengage is used. This is the first bonus level for the new hunter and so each of the choices should be something that affects the game enough for the new hunter to feel the difference in their gameplay and entices them to go for the next bonus.

Comment by bmworkman314

Snipe sounds a bit underwhelming.With or Without you sounds awesome. BM pets become Jacks of all trades.And non BM get to become stone-cold lone-rangers.

Comment by bmworkman314

Grimoire of Sacrifice makes sense on a Warlock - the demons are not lifelong friends who the warlock raised and fed and cared for. Warlocks killing their servants seems fitting.

But a Hunter sacrificing his buddy for a damage increase? That is depressing. Also, a Warlock gets a health buff and self-healing if he sacrifices his pet with Soul Link. Hunters need something along these lines for the sacrificed pet.

Comment by Jazzism

I remember the vanilla days when hutner pets were temp dots. Fire and forget them and focus on your toons damage. Pets were relatively weak and MM was the choice spec and only allowed spec for our raids.

I can see that scenario step up again in the new 'WoWY' ... wowy ... sounds like a Scooby Doo show thing. Anyway, in raids who want to go MM/SV and not worry about their pet getting hung up somewhere and glitching, this will be a fine choice for them. I can see it also adding flavour to each spec vs now. I look forward to it.

Comment by djspins

My concern is does With or Without You make you radiate a pet buff while not having a pet, otherwise the talent is completely worthless to me as a 10man Sv hunter. Damn spell haste

Comment by Ghouls

Finally! I always wanted to feel more like an archer by playing Hunter but the pet kind of ruined the feel.

Comment by Gilissa

I've always disliked Arcane Shot, and the thought of using Bola Shot and seeing people blow up is putting a smile on my face. Thank you Blizzard!

Comment by Jez7

They should definitely add some kind of spiritual pet presence (as a ghost pet that's always by your side) when people take With or Without you as MM or SV. Especially for the 30, 45, and 60 talents. WoWY certainly seems to get half the tree and reduce 9 options down to about 3! Doh!

Comment by rsmith91487

For With or Without You, I did a quick analysis of the DPS gain based on how much your pet normally contributes to your DPS:

So, if your pet is normally contributing 20% or less to your DPS, this talent could be a fairly nice DPS boost, considering it is entirely passive and simplifies your rotation.

Comment by matheus314

I liked these ideas, but what's still bugging me about "With or WIthout You" is that no pet = no buffs, and that is a very important change.

Comment by Menardis

Further thoughts about the final tier of talents, Lone Wolf is going to be a bit hard to implement when it makes the other talent tree choices useless. Spirit Bond. Blink Strikes. Lynx Rush. Intimidation. Fervor becomes limited in use, and furthermore, Master's Call, Roar of Sacrifice and the additional support of a pet ability / buff and mobile tank is gone.

30% damage buff isn't enough for what you lose... in fact unless you're in a fully buffed raid, playing your best, you will be LOSING dps due to this talent because of how much the Hunter class is designed around a pet.

Surely after 8 years of WoW players would accept this but colour me surprised at the number of people above who wish to gimp their character.

Comment by dreadhooker

how is bola shots damage going to compare with arcane shot at max level, its hard to get pumped about it to much with out knowing. Will it make thrill of the hunt pointless? seems a bit odd that they are making talents that kind of contradict each other, like spirit bond and wowy etc.In saying that, I would be willing to wager that when the expac hits, the talents will be nothing like these above.

Comment by nomadbr

tnks for builder!

Comment by Thrune

Hopefully they'll get rid of or combine some of our abilities and let me delete some keybinds...

Comment by Axmand

Stupid question:

The Bola Sho talent says that the main target will take 3000 of damage and the enemies around will take 2000 of damage, but the main target will also take those 2000 of damage? in total of 5000 of damage...? or those 2000 of damage will only affect the enemies around?...

Comment by Death087

Comment by painlesswar

for me i see hunter got a lot of really good talents but i must say that with or with out you is op now there pets can almost help them solo most rares and i think thats just far to silly they already can solo so much and its just crazy

Comment by andenogma

Comment by Pareenaonoma

If you make your talents without any pet abilities or requires and you got ur character on markmanship spec adding the new spell with or without you i think its gonna be pretty awesome. Maybe a new nuke class....gonna lvl up my hunter for sure!

Comment by Slvr2th

I do not like the "With or Without You" talent. The whole hunter class revolves around your pet, it has since vanilla, but now you're saying that I can drop the thing that makes my class unique and deal more damage? If this talent becomes something that is "elitist" or ends up giving you a larger dps bonus than the other two in its tier, I'm re-rolling. I'm not playing a hunter without my pet at my side. It's like playing a mage without mana...

Comment by nefarian789

I have very important question - will be Bola Shot affected by Thrill of the Hunt?

Comment by Undeadreaper

I'd just like to say that Snipe gives you 60 focus while Steady Shot only gives you 14... That's a pretty big bonus.

Comment by PBnJdh

The new hunter talents look great! I'm especially looking forward to the addition of With or Without you.

Comment by WingedPanther

Gotta say, that as a MM Hunter I'm not really looking forward to either WoWY or Snipe. The idea of having to stand still while casting what would be my MAIN Focus generator is distasteful to me, especially given the number of times being able to run out of the way of an attack while casting has saved my hide and others too. With or Without you makes no sense to be offering at this high a level, as others have pointed out since it makes many of the other talents useless. Further more, axing the pet destroys one of the core concepts of the hunter class, and seriously detracts from the flavour and intent of the class. You may as well take demons away from warlocks, or stealth away from rogues.Which leaves me by default having to take Bola. Which, while I will confess, that of the three I find it the most useful to me, the fact that it becomes a default power instead of "a tough choice to make" leaves me feeling completely disappointed about the selection of Hunter talents coming out. I hope some SERIOUS changes are in the works here, because frankly, this doesn't cut it.

Comment by CloverSlayer

Why not Demonic Servitude for Hunters?

Comment by Lovepie

With or Without You seems really interesting for BM. With getting Cornered on your ferocity pet, you could do some some pretty nice counters together with Glyph of Endless Wrath, both in PVP and in PVE. Also, having your pet get tankier while still doing the same DPS is really great for not only PVP, but aswell as progression raids, soloing old raid content and questing. I am really excited about it.

Comment by Kataclysia

My thoughts on the New Talents:

Bola Shot - I will admit this sounds interesting and gives Hunters more AoE abilities, yet it does not excite me. It will be a nice ability but I am not to thrilled by the prospect of this ability and the fact that it replaces Arcane Shot really bothers me.

Snipe - While this may turn out to be a very powerful ability right now it seems underwhelming compared to the Shots it would replace.

With Or Without You - This is the talent that interest me the most. The prospect of having a Petless Hunter is intriguing and at the same time the abilities a pet would gain if you are a BM Hunter look promising. I cannot wait to be roaming around Draenor as a level 100 MM Hunter with no pet.

That being said since I have a BM and a MM Hunter I would choose With or Without You on both toons. Bola Shot does have potential though.

For all those people that are against the "Lone Wolf" Passive Ability do you not think that adding a Talent that makes a Hunter a "Ranger" is better than having two Hunter classes. That is what it would be if they made a new class. I am happy to see that Warlords will open the door to petless Hunters.

Comment by Kahiyao

Marksman now becomes massively better with the Lone Wolf buff! Marksman was essentially a Spec that was self-focused rather than becoming reliant upon the pet to do most of the damage. Survival has also got a big buff from this as well, but This bump up talent really brings the Marksman back up in usability.

The 30% increase definitely makes up for the DPS lost by the pet

Pets are now heading in the direction of Guardian pops. I think it makes sense too. Active pet buffs will take effect only when you're in a tight situation, then calling your pet in at the last second forces your opponent to change strategies while you maintain active DPS.

Comment by CloverSlayer

Dual Pets for Hunters!

Comment by Suej

Will be updated to reflect the new talents soon

Let's see:

Bola Shot

Hunters -and huntards alike- are missing AoE, that's right. The proc on the legendary cape, plus the 2-pieces effect of Battlegear of the Unblinking Vigil sort of fixed it (more haste, faster Steadies/Cobras, more focus to burn on Multi-Shot) as long as you pick Thrill of the Hunt in lvl 60, and better yet if you are MM (though this spec is kinda broken for PvE, nowadays), with and Bombardment. Thus far, Bola Shot seems like a nice addition. It kills Arcane Shot, and it does not benefit from weapon damage, which kinda sucks. No idea if it'll benefit from Thrill of the Hunt. Not that useful in PvP, though -and potentially counter-productive (CC breaking)-, and not that useful in PvE, either (because of its truly low AoE range). Still, I think it's the best pick for raiding as MM and SV (though only useful for fights like Galakras or trash), just good for BGs, pretty dangerous for Arenas.

Snipe

Replaces Steady Shot and Cobra Shot. For BM and SV, it now refreshes , instead of just adding 6 seconds (as Chimaera Shot does for MM). For MM, it triggers -not sure if it works the same way Steadies do or just one Snipe will trigger the effect, I'm guessing the second-, though it says nothing about being affected by Careful Aim, or if it still procs . It makes more damage (up from 66% WD+2632 / 77% WD to 150% WD) and generates much more focus. Although: Steady Shot and Cobra Shot have 2 sec casting time, while Snipe has a 2.77 secs cast time (even more than Powershot), and you cannot cast it while moving. For SV, it does not benefit anymore from Mastery as Cobra does. It is entire physical damage, so it's reduced by armor (as Steady Shot). Plus, 60 focus gain can be a bit too much, making you waste focus, depending on your haste, your lag, and how much focus you had when you started the cast. Quite useless in PvP (it trashes the hunter's mobility), extremely situational in PvE (dummy-like bosses like Madness and strong trash only).

With or Without You

Let's break it down:

Lone Wolf (SV & MM)

Not really that much of a change in PvE, actually. Your pet does about 20~30% of your damage atm. You'll get slightly more DPS by taking out of the equation the time the pet loses while running to your target, and the time it spends dead (though Heart of the Phoenix is usually enough to minimize that last issue). Seems a good pick. BUT (there's always a but -though I'd rather a butt-) you'll lose a buff, erasing with it the "jack of all trades" card the hunter can play to get a spot in 10m cores. So, slightly more DPS (should test it to be sure of how much), no more wild card buff.

In PvP, you may have an increase in your DPS, since your pet is a potential target, though you should be able to manage it with Heart of the Phoenix and the new 4-sec-minus-haste CD of Revive Pet. The con in this case is that you'll lose a CC, since you most likely are taking a pet (no matter the current spec).

Any CC/Buff/Debuff the pet provides (they are too many to list them all, just follow the link and check the "Special Ability" and "Bonus Ability" columns -minus the Exotic Pets- in Petopia)

An what about Hunter's main offensive CD? Stampede Will we still have to carry pets while we are choosing not to?

Not that good of a choice, IMHO

And as said by @Menardis:

A

HUNDRED

LEVELS

OF

TRUSTING

WATERY

DOLEFUL

PET

EYES

It completely breaks the Hunter flavour...

Versatility (BM)

The talent you want to get if you are BM. Extra damage to your pet in all situations, some cool pet talents from and (since your pet is surely because of Heart of the Phoenix). Ask any PvPer why they hate BM hunters, and they'll all answer about the same "Because the bloody pet kills you even before the hunter gets into the fight." With this talent they'll all be twice as right. In PvE, the pet is currently doing about 50% of the DPS, so this improvement will surely be spotted right away. BM's pets will certainly become killing machines. And if Kill Command benefits from this talent, you won't hear the end of it. All pros, no cons.

So, to sumarize:

BM Hunters have a hell of a lvl 100 talent in With or Without You.MM and SV are not so lucky, they just get 3 regular-to-crappy options, all of them very situational and always having to make a sacrifice.

Comment by Stephan123

I am one of the people who like the idea of a pet-less hunter, so obviously I like the idea of the With or Without You talent although then again there are some not so tasteful side-effects when taking such a talent : e.g. Can't use Spirit Bond talent as it requires pet; you will no longer have pet to tank for you, et cetera et cetera (the list goes on!)

-Examples as such make me think a whole spec around the "Lone Wolf" could be appropriate and quite attractive but then again with such a spec if you wanted a more "lone wolf" hunter class you would only be able to choose that spec rather than Marksmanship or Survival.

I personally would prefer a new spec so that all your pet dependant abilities (quite a few of them I believe) can be replaced and attributes given for those lost and possibly hope for new awesome (visual-wise too!) abilities.

Comment by he11reaver

First, if blizzard is really going to go through with this pet less hunter idea, then they are more than likely going to fix how it interacts with the other talents so that you aren't forced into certain talents because the others are broken. Second, i can't understand why so many people are getting angry over this pet less hunter idea. The suggestion to make a new class that also is a ranged physical dps that isn't tied to a pet is silly and a waste of resources, and would only make balancing the game even more of a nightmare for blizzard. Why can't those of us who are sick of our pets be allowed to play competitively without the fuzzy terror (my pet is obviously a cat). I'm speaking mostly from a pve perspective since the amount of stuff a pet brings to the table in pvp is too much to give up if you actually want to be relevant.

Comment by heldrock

My thoughts on the new level 100 talents for hunters in a 100% PvP perspective.

Bola Shot: I think bola shot is a good idea, assuming it deals more damage than arcane shot this would be single handedly the best talent for MM/SV hunters, due to the fact that the other talents are just BAD for PvP. However I do have one question about this talent. Will Bola Shot break CC? If Bola Shot breaks CC then it will be completly useless in PvP due to the fact that if I land a scatter trap and my kill target is near the trapped target, my damaging abilities will break it, which is what glaive toss currently does unfortunatly and I really wish that would get changed, I should be able to deal damage to my target without a quick AOE spell breaking the trap.

Snipe: This talent would work if it could be cast while moving, but would require a short cooldown, maybe 5 seconds or so. However the current state of snipe just would not work for PvP due to the fact that us Hunter's NEED to stay mobile in order to succeed in PvP. The only way I can actually see this talent being worth while is if you are an Rbger. You could stand in the back of a fight and just Snipe all day seeing as hunters are usually not the kill target over something like a Dk, Mage or lock. However we only defend bases so nevermind that.

With or Without you: Good for BM, horrid for MM/SV. We need our Roar of Sacrifice, Master's Call, and our pets ability, Lulluby ect...In order to do well in PvP. Sacrificing that for 30% more damage just IS NOT worth it. Maybe the 1500 Hunter's that give you feedback think it's a great idea but trust me...IT'S

Honestly I believe that Snipe and WoWy should be removed, they are not good ideas and could be replaced with new defensives. Roar of Sacrifice often gets our pet killed due to the fact our pets have horrible survivability, Deterrence despite getting changed with the removal of Readieness so that we automaticly have 2 of the ability, it dose not work ANYTHING like it did in wrath. Back in wrath if you Deterrenced, and you had DoT's on you, they would not deal any damage to you in that short 5 second window, aswell as if you were attacked from behind you could not be harmed and could activate Aspect of the Cheetah without it breaking. Seeing as deterrence ENTIRELY surrounds you, you should never be able to take damage while it's up. I don't feel like that's asking entirely to much.

New defensives would honestly be the best thing for our new talents or even our new level 100 ability.

Comment by combatboots7

As a BM hunter I love the look of With or Without You. However, I feel it may be way too under-powered for MM/SV hunters.

I think Lone Wolf should be a buff that changes the function of some of the pet focused talents.

For Intimidation maybe a Shot with the same functionality.For Spirit Bond, the Lone Wolf regenerates without a pet.

Blink Strikes and Lynx Rush are harder.Maybe Lynx Rush could add a bleed effect to Multi-Shot (or any of the level 90 talents) with a maximum of 9 bleed stacks active at any given moment.Maybe Blink Strikes could become an active spell that would either teleport the hunter to 30 yards behind the target (probably broken), or reduce the cooldown on Misdirection (less broken, but more PvE oriented).

As for the talents that include pets/having pets, but are still useful without:Exhileration could have a short HoT added to the initial heal effect.Fervor might extend the Focus regeneration to something like 75 Focus over 15 sec, restore more than 50 Focus up front, or maybe reduce the cooldown on Rapid Fire.Thrill of the Hunt increase the number of Arcane/Multi-Shots available at the reduced Focus cost.

I dunno. Just a few ideas. I'm still waiting for my no-pets-required healing ability. Hunters are pretty left out in that department (2 min cooldown on a talent? come on).

Comment by Cynthilis

WITH OUT WITHOUT YOUUU, WITH OR WIIIIITHOOOUT YOUU OHHHHHOOOOOO did anyone else think of U2 seeing that talent?

Comment by Gryfhus

Hello everybody !

Well, I don't know about you, but these new talents made me think a lot, even though they're still technically in the development process. So let's take a further look shall we ?

Bola shot :

Advantages :

Brand new AoE, with fire damages,

Replaces Arcane Shot, which means your focus dump will from now on hit multiple targets, and also that it shall benefit from every Arcane Shot advantage (such as ToTH, Cobra strikes for BM, and so on),

Obviously it's on the GCD.

Drawbacks :

Very dangerous in PVP because of its "CC-breaking" ability,

Radius a little too tiny.

It's funny because someone already brought up the fact that this talent is one of the old Explosive Shot design, before it was scrapped to a single target use; but anyhow, this spell looks very useful PVE BM and MM, since they're a bit lacking in the AoE department; it deals elemental damages (which, as it has been recently brought up, could definitely benefit Survival hunters, thanks to the mastery), it doesn't cost too much focus, and we can only hope that the damages will be as high (if not higher) than Arcane Shot.

The only problem with it is that the radius (5 yards), is a little too small, and it would rather have a 8 yards radius, just like Multi-Shot, so we logically could hit the same targets with Multi-Shot AND Bola Shot ^^

Plus, who's not excited about the idea to throw a freaking fire bola ? Hunter will become cow-boys from hell xD'

Do you remember the dark ages of Cataclysm where you were forced to trade DPS for mobility with Aspect of the Fox ? Well, it looks that Blizzard wants that concept to come back in our spell book, and I'm gonna say right now : it's a step backwards.

Fluent mobility is something we almost reached in Wotlk, and that we had to battle for throughout Cataclysm and MoP, where the developers finally understood that the hunter gameplay relies on casting abilities on the go while kitting mobs / players, and now they want to take it back again ?

I may sound very obvious, but the idea of a talent is to upgrade an ability, not to trade it for something that is equivalent to it (or, in this case, for a very situational and generally unreliable focus resource). Plus, who would stand still for 2.77 seconds ? Any other cast time never went above 2 seconds (provided you have a little haste), and they want us to wait this long to regenerate our main resource ? Another aspect that also has been brought up is the fact that Snipe does generate too much focus, and it leads more to a focus waste than to a focus gain ! The idea of Cobra Shotand Steady Shot is to get the DPS going while regaining resource at the same time; here, we'll have to stop moving, wait almost 1 second longer than Cobra Shot/ Steady Shot, and our focus bar will immediately be refilled ! Then during 10 seconds, we'll DPS, and then stop again to refill your focus bar, and so on and so forth.

It reminds me of the Wotlk DPS-cycle actually; do you remember when you had 30 secs to DPS, then had to cast Aspect of the Viper and Volley to regain your mana in 4 seconds ? Well, it looks like they want us to do the same thing again, but this time around, we'll only have less than 10 secs to DPS, which is incredibly underwhelming to me ...

If they really wanted to upgrade Cobra Shot/ Steady Shot, they'd just put a bigger coefficient damage and add something like 10 focus to the actual regeneration of Cobra Shot / Steady Shot; here's what I'd go for :

MM: Your Steady Shot doesn't have a cast time any longer.SV / BM : Your Cobra Shot doesn't have a cast time any longer.

Okay, my suggestion doesn't drastically change a whole much, but it's certainly more convenient than they want us to do with the actual Snipe spell (and the instant proc of / reset of is perhaps a little too OP aswell, right ?).But I will say that the core idea of upgrading our focus regeneration is a very interesting choice ! Really showing that the developers have learned from their past mistakes !

Sorry, but my comment is sliced in two, see you in the upper comment ^^

Comment by Gryfhus

(Be sure to read my first comment before heading to this one ^^)WoWY :

Versatility : Let's get it out of the way right now : your pet is now on steroids.

However, I don't see how Kill Command's damage will be directly upped via this talent, since it is the pet who received all the extra damage, and since Kill Command is based on the hunter's RAP (last check on MoP : it is still based on the master's RAP, not on the pet's own AP); so, technically, KC's will legitimately perform higher damage because of the increase of Combat Experience, but won't directly be upped, according to the tooltip.

But, honestly, doesn't this talent kind of break the whole idea to have a spec for a pet ? I mean with this talent, even a ferocity pet will be able to tank pretty well; doesn't it go against the whole idea that a pet is supposed to have advantages and weakness at the same time ? This concept makes as sense as a pet-less hunter actually, as it has been noticed.I'm perhaps looking a little bit too deep into it, but anyhow, it's satisfying to see that BM will gain a proper buff in the next extension, since they always had the lowest DPS in the previous extensions (again, I'm excluding MoP).

Lone Wolf : This is by far the most interesting talent of the bunch : it leads to such great possibilities !Personally, I've been waiting for an archer option since my first WoW experience, and I'm finally happy to see that Blizzard seems to go that way too !

Advantages :

Your DPS will now rely on you 100% of the time; no more dead pet because the boss focus it in PVE, or in a BG,

30% extra damage, at first sight, looks like a powerful buff.

Drawbacks :

No more mobile tank, or animal shield, and God knows how much the hunter mobility relies on the pet,

Some abilities (spells and talents) are now meaningless,

Apparently, pets do around 20 % of their owner's damages (which for me, as a Cataclysm hunter, seems stupidly high, but since I never played MoP, I can't say anything about it), which would lead to an actual 5 % damage bonus,

And we can say bye to our dear pet buffs.

Okay, so first off, we have to keep in mind that the talent we're seeing here aren't even in the bêta yet, which means that they'll be suspect of numerous changes before hitting on our future realms.

Let's tackle the missing spells first; well, we all noticed it, some talents and spells rely on the pet, but which one of them actually need to get a "Lone Wolf" section ? Here's what I think :

Intimidation: this spells actually used to be a BM specialization trademark, and has become a talent : the reason why it doesn't need to get modified for Lone Wolf is because it relies on the pet ; and since LW hunters won't have any pet, it would mean that Blizzard would design a whole new spell for pet-less hunters, which, in my opinion, is redundant since we already have Binding Shot, which would work like a charm in a LW gameplay (I'll explain why later on the comment),

Exhilaration: again, this talent is designed to help your pet more than you, and as a pet-less hunter, you just won't need such a CD.

Master's Call: this PVP-godsend just needs to be cast without a pet. LW players just won't be able to play PVP without this spell.

Stampede: again, just like the previous spell, you'll kindda need it in a burst situation; the idea could be that when you cast it, all your pet that are resting in your five stables come out during the traditional 20 secs and deals their usual damages, even though you'll have no active pet.

Spirit Bond : this talent is by far too useful in an arena situation, it just needs to be active even for LW players.

Blink Strikes : I have thought of a very special treatment for this one ; as I said before, the hunter's mobility is reduced when he doesn't have a pet, which would lead LW to put a lot more emphases on kitting and speed than others hunters that have a pet that can easily pull the aggro or snare a target. LW players will also miss a pet buff in a solo scenario (like quests, arena or even donjons), so here's what I thought for the LW's part of Blink Strikes :

Blink Strikes : (Lone Wolf only)

- Increases the range of all your attacks by 10 yards,- Increases your movement speed by 20% (shall stack with others speed enhancements, except for Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the Pack),- And you gain the following spell :Blink Strikes : allows you to cast a pet's buff when it's not active; it lasts 30 minutes, it is an individual aura, and it will be cancelled when you're partying with someone who shares the same effect.Only one pet buff can be active at the time.

So, with this talent, your kitting won't be that big of a deal, since your speed will be increased, making up or the lack of pet, and your extra range will allow you to keep targets away from you without being hit (in theory).I previously mentionned Binding Shot , which would totally fit here ; for instance, if you cast Binding Shot on a target, and you stay 50 yards away from it, it would be completly trapped, because if it tries to come after you, it would get stunned, and if it stays where it is, you'lle be able to attack it with no consequence on you whatsoever !

And the Blink Strikes active spell will activate a pet buff, provided you have the actual pet in one of your five stables; it basically would work just like the aspects, only this time it shall last an half-hour, and if you're in party with a guy that shares a similar effect, the buff will get cancelled.

For example, if you have a cat and a wolf in your stables, when clicking on the Blink Strike spell, you'll get the option to activate Roar of Courage or Furious Howl, and both of the buffs will get a 45 seconds cooldown, preventing you to cast the cat's buff and the wolf's buff at the same time.

But those buffs will be individual, which means you won't be able to cast it on a friendly target, because the objective here is to help LW hunters to DPS on their own ^^; so basically, they would work just like the aspects, only that they can be dispelled and that you can alter them depending on which pet you have in your stables.

And finally when it comes to the 30% extra damage, if it appears that LW offers less DPS than other hunter's talents, I think that the developers will upgrade the coefficient's buff, or perhaps nerf the pet damages, but I don't think they'll let this talent offer LESS damage than hunters who haven't picked a level 100 talent.

So, to sum up :

- Bola shot : great AOE talent (if it had a 8 yards radius),

- Snipe : good intention, but it looks kind of like an underwhelming spell as it is presented here ...

- WoWY : awesome for BM, but the LW's buff will have to get polished a lot.

And for those who think of a new class or spec, I really don't see how the developers will create new spells from scratch and balance it with other classes ... And, let's face it, before being "pets", we're "hunters" : the archery culture only exists in our class, and it will be redundant to create a hunter clone ...

But anyhow, these ideas make me happy; I'm really looking foreward to this expansion !

Thanks for reading X)'

Comment by Kethrocyte

I certainly hear you all on how underwhelming Snipe is, but imo it should replace Aimed Shot, not Steady/Cobra Shot.

Comment by Joshelby

Personally I think if the whole `With or Without You` thing goes through it will ruin hunters. BM Will become the onlu viable spec and to be honest I hate having a pet anyway, but by adding this talent which means hunters that hate pets can get rid of them can finally have their wish fulfilled, Blizzard have inadvertently forced us in to playing only BM which is the complete oposite. Blizz, sort this for all of us lone wolves to be badass and not have any pathetic little kitty cat running around after us.

Comment by Trishi

I'm confused as to why people claim Lone Wolf would "Detract from the class' intent and flavour" or anything of the sort.

I choose a Hunter because I wanted an Archer. Not a beastmaster - An Archer. Because this was literally my only choice. I've wanted a real ranger class for a long time, and when Blizzard finally made it possible to shot at point blank range, I hoped they would finally allow a real solo-archer choice, whether as a spec, glyph, talent or whatever.

This talent makes me very happy, and I'll be using it as soon as I hit 100 on my Survival hunter. I do agree, however, that it seems weird to place it this far down the line.

I'm thinking it would have been more fitting as a sort of "Demon Hunting" glyph, that gave a bonus to your damage, depending on your spec. How, I'm not sure, but just something that would make it a break-even glyph, so maybe a few percantages of additional damage compared to having a pet out, to make up for not having a pet or any of its associated abilities and buffs. Allow this glyph from the get-go, IE at level 25. This way, you actually build up a lone wolf hunter from low levels, instead of suddenly turning into a lone wolf upon hitting level 100. That's pretty weird for an RP'er to explain.

The supposed "issue" with the broken talents isn't something I'd worry about. I'd wager that Blizzard intends to fix that by the time it hits PTR. Really doubt they'd just have a handful of talents be a non-choice for lone wolf hunters.

Comment by Romanthony

Bola shot seems good to me, were as Snipe i feel like it just gets rid of the versatility, of Steady shot, how you can cast it while moving.

With or Without you seems Utterly Strange to me. As a Long Time BM hunter, It seems like this skill is Solely for BM hunters, I mean yea sure 30% buff to all other specs but think of what your losing. 5% crit from other pets, Group wide buffs like Roars and such and it also Gets rid of your tanking pet while Soloing. It really is a strange talent to me And seems VERY one sided.

So for me as a BM hunter its between Bola Shot and With or Without you, snipe just feels so underwhelming and gets rid of the versatility of Steady shot

Comment by Tuju

These are terrible for pvp. All of them are *!@#. Come blizzard give us something useful for pvp not JUST PVE.

Comment by Rainenlawl

I have been wanting the Lone Wolf option since late Wrath early Cata. I though MM should be an automatic Lone Wolf. To me MM is the physical dmg bow spec and WoWY fulfills that.

WoWY also makes BM even more about the pet dps which is something I always thought BM should be. If a BM doesn't have his/her pet then s/he should be useless.

The only thing I don't like is the way WoWY affects Survival. I don't think that Survival hunters should lose their pet but instead the pet should gain some sort of nature damage bonus or specialization. This would fit more with the theme that Survival is a more magical/nature damage bow spec. SV has BA and ES playing key roles and SV mastery is all about magic dmg increase: Mastery: Essence of the Viper

Comment by Rorfan

If i see a BM hunter in arena now i'm killing the pet first now.It's goin g to cripple his damage to much to not too

Comment by Felcurse

WoWY is by far the most interessing talent in this new xpac as our pets often die or get stuck in raids & world encounters ! Having this talent will be profitable for both BM and Survival-Marksmanship hunters. With some changes made to old talents&spells that requires pet to be active this will be an amazing talent to have for anyone who prefer "ranger" playing style

Comment by Sensanmann

I've noticed that nobody has touched on the fact that bola shot for SV unlike the other two talents will scale with mastery, so could in fact be a very powerful SV talent. For AOE it will most likely be the go to for SV just because you'll be able to have serpent sting on multiple targets, burn them with explosive trap and then also hit them with the bola, that's a lot of magic damage going out right there, and depending on how much damage it will deal compared to AS it could be a very powerful single target ability for SV, we'll just have to wait and see.

Comment by Lycanlord

I am EXTREMELY excited for Lone Wolf. I feel it would be better than snipe for MM.

Comment by magicbus

Would Bola Shot apply to Thrill of the Hunt, since it replaces Arcane shot?

Comment by Fluppers

I'm surprised people are giving Bola Shot much attention at all, without weapon scaling it'll be obsolete in no time. Although it'll presumably be worked into TotH, I can't imagine it even beginning to compete with WoWY (Snipe only really seems viable for MM). It's also just plain incongruous, I can't speak for MM but as Survival you're already going to multishot anyway due to SS spreading so the AoE isn't that attractive (compared to 30% damage pet replacement) and as BM WoWY is so overpowered in its draft state that Bola seems pretty #$%^ty for anything except MM, who are the only spec with Snipe as a real option.

Of course, this will all probably change, but even so.

Comment by asiankami

Really? Cmon Blizzard...With or Without you Now you can play your BM hunter with even less skill (If thats even possible)... 70% increased pet dmg.Ctrl 1 GO!

Comment by Mindbender94

Snipe from Klaxxi and Bola Shot from Demon Hunters. How much thought was really put into this?

Comment by Demonhuntern

I LOVE THE NEW LVL 100 TALENTS!

Comment by Jonnieeb

Something to bare in mind

Even if you hate the idea of a petless hunter, there are still going to be people out there who love it. I can't say I'm one of them, but I can totally understand why somebody might want to emulate the feel of a 'ranger' class. The whole point of the MoP talent tree was an emphasis on choice, so everybody could play to their preference. Just because you don't think you'll use a talent, that doesn't make it bad.

What does make it bad is the broken abilities/talents that no longer function without a pet. However, since we're so far away from launch, I expect Blizzard to fix that issue soon. I really hope they don't remove With or Without You, though. I think it's a great concept and I look forward to seeing some wannabe Windrunners around.

Comment by globenstine

wow...our lvl 100 talents suck...I hope these change..BM has the only talent worth a crap..all the other classes have such broken lv 100 talents...I mean DK's get defile AND necrotic plague and we get this lame crap COME ON BLIZZ I THOUGHT U WERE DONE HATING ON HUNTERS!

Comment by Deuteronomy93

WoWY:

You aren't sacrificing your pet, you're just not using it. I believe this needs to be changed and have a dedicated pet to sacrifice as 90% of hunters use specific pets to fill in raid buffs (and pvp abilities). Not giving out raidbuffs anymore will be a serious setback and in its current iteration the only way you will have the buff will be to cast it beforehand which will of course run out.

As such SV/MM will have less raidbuffs unless this is addressed. SV/BM will gain more mobility over their dmg by not waiting for pets and a large dmg increase on them themselves.

Additionally, with Thunderstomp now available I do think that Fervor will become much more sought after, as well as crit for BM making GFTT proc more often for that extra pet focus, whether Thunderstomp will be good enough to use single target remains to be seen.

Snipe:

Probably not the choice for BM/SV, BM will benefit more from WoWY in all circumstances and for SV the lack of movement + physical dmg vs WoWY's increased movement (no more having to tell your pet to attack another target/macro to your spells) just doesn't seem appealing enough.

The ability may be appealing to MM however, it should be affected by careful aim causing it to crit very often on >80% health targets and of course benefit from piercing shots which will improve it even more. You will however have to cast this 3 times to get your instant aimed which is 180 focus and not including passive regen nor steady focus, this will result in massive amounts of focus dumping before you can use the instant aimed shot, additionally in order to get steady focus you will need to cast it twice in a row, thats 120 focus + the aforementioned focus and with a maximum pool of 100, this hasn't been thought through very well.

Bola:

Will surely be affected by ToTH.

This is quite an interesting talent, for SV you will on multiple targets need to keep serpent string through serpent spread up in order to maximise dmg before you Bola, this could be good on AOE fights however, WoWY will sacrifice that pet that just does single target, a bola + pet may be worse than a MS + WoWY but.. it is elemental dmg and for that fact it could be a real contender with SV's mastery and no armour to go against.

BM will just not take this talent.

MM may take this talent as multi-shot currently is only affected by bombardment not piercing shots so the fact it ignores armour is a nice addition, though after the first MS you will be paying out 10 more focus. Again a Bola +pet vs MS + WoWY scenario.

!Verdict!

Single Target:-BM: WoWYSV: WoWYMM: WoWY, however if the flaws of Snipe are fixed to not make it ridiculous for excess focus then it could be snipe.

Comment by Unaki

The more I think about it, the more I wish I had snipe now. A whopping 60 focus for 1 more second of channeling would make the T16 2pc so much better. I hope the next tier has something similar.

Comment by aggrophobic

I reckon this is pretty much a wash for SV hunters, you'll simply pick the talent that does least damage to the raid, which by default is the 3rd option. It will remain unused in a raid situation (normally you'd bring a ravager if all buffs are covered) and therefore does no harm.

AoE spell damage instead of an arcane shot could be disastrous and therefore removes a valuable instant shot from your arsenal in many situations. There is also the question whether will Arcane shot provide more damage in a single target situation.

Not being able to move in a boss fight is absolutely disastrous, thus it will gimp you in two ways. First you'll be limited to instant casts while moving (which in boss fights is often or always) and secondly any damage increase the spell has is lost through the lack of mastery buff to your cobra's nature damage.

So that leaves the petless buff, a completely worthless talent for raiding, but at least it causes no harm.

Of course this is purely speculation. What no one has considered is what new glyphs might be available to make these talents worth something more than their base function. For example a glyph that allows you to move while casting, one that increases pet damage instead of without a pet damage, one that turns the aoe shot back into an even stronger, single target instant.. any of those options (if given) could change how these are considered.

Comment by Elfwithblade

I must say i don't want any of the lvl 90 talents.Not that they are bad,but i've made it my rule to never take atalent that replaces a spell(i want more,not slightly better)so the first two are out of the question.And i actually like my pet so i don't want it gone.

Comment by Kerafirewing

Not happy with any of the current 100 talents.

Bola: I'm not a blasted demon hunter. And I don't want to give up my arcane shot for that crap.

Snipe: Can't be used while moving yet unless Blizz does a 180 in WoD, there are TOO MANY fights where you MUST move while shooting in some form. And given that too many tanks still want to chain pull like maniacs and expect you to shoot and move at the same time because they want the dungeons done in 2 minutes, also not very practical.

WoWY: A few of the abilities coming into all specs would be nice but the bug of zoning into a place and having growl or thunderstomp getting turned on upon appearing is still in place. I've given up reporting it and have gotten fussed at more times than I can count when it is not my fault. And since tanks want to rush into pulling things, can't change specs of pet in combat and the first damage to me pulls the pet into the fight and before I can get passive hit they are doing thunderstomp and/or growl because it got turned on. I keep bringing up thunderstomp only because I fear it will get added to this bug if in all specs. Of course, it COULD get fixed before WoD goes live but has been around since Cata so not sure that will happen. And just fyi, I've been standing still at the shrine and in queue for a dungeon or whatnot and had this happen and the pet was checked to make sure it was correct spec or correct one summoned prior to even joining the queue. It does not happen every time yet it's enough of a headache this would simply add to it.

Currently not going to be taking a level 100 talent if this is how it ends up. Hopefully they will do better before launch.

Comment by Khurszan

I really like the idea of Snipe. Not the fact that it kills mobility, but that we get one big SS that is better than the two small ones. That is awesome. I like the idea of further differentiating the specs, surv has more dots and I like the idea of MM having more cast time shots, like a real hunter, taking his time for the perfect shot and doing big damage with it (I say MM because of the physical damage thing, it seems to make the most sense to me for MM to pick Snipe).

I also think that WoWoY kind of sucks seeing that if a pet is doing 20-30% of ones damage and we get a 30% boost for losing it. That's a relatively small increase in damage and I don't like the idea of telling my companion of 100 levels to take a hike for no reason :(. And this comes from a petless hunter fan actually. I think MM should be a petless spec just like mages and Dks have their pet spec.

Now I'm seeing Suej all over here bashing petless hunters "No pet = No hunter". Wtf dude, does a petless hunter somehow threaten your lifestyle choice? Also, you referenced Rexxar as "THE hunter"? In WC3 he was a beastmaster, NOT a hunter. If anyone is THE hunter of WoW, it's Nesingwary with his safari, and I enjoy pointing out that he has no pet, just a big gun :).

Comment by Whoisthiscook

According to this video, Bola Shot has been replaced with Flaming Arrows:

Snipe has become Focusing Shot:Focusing Shot40yd range2.55 sec castCarefully line up a shot at the target that deals 100% weapon damage and prepares focuses you, generating 75 Focus.

Cannot be cast while moving.

Replaces Steady Shot and Cobra Shot

Versatility no longer grants the following abilities regardless of pet specialization:RabidThunderstompBullheaded

Comment by lightblademc

If this talent tree is up to date, "With or Without You" is still removing pets for Survival and Marksman specs.

Personally I like the fact that you can trade your pet for more "Personal" dmg. I think "With or Without You" will be the go to talent for beastmasters. I feel like there is no choice for beastmaster spec unfortunately, your pet deals most of your dmg so why wouldn't you?

I think the "Flaming shots" talent is kind of stupid. I mean it's basically a dps increase with no interaction. This talent will probably be unbelievably good for Survival because of their passive which increases magical dmg.

When it comes to the "Focusing Shot", it seems like a good talent for all the specs (except beastmaster for obvious reasons), it gives a LOT of focus to play with.

Comment by Axmand

I think the "Flaming shots" talent is kind of stupid. I mean it's basically a dps increase with no interaction. This talent will probably be unbelievably good for Survival because of their passive which increases magical dmg.

Not only SV hunters, MM too.

BTW, IMO, the most controversial talent is Focusing Shot by the fact that you cant move while casting, but looking the good side, you only need to cast it once per rotation...

Comment by wrongheaded

Making Stampede a talent is an awful idea. it's a fun flavor ability that I enjoy, even if it doesn't do a ton of damage. Sometimes I think people forget that there's more to this game than numbers. I'm glad it's not being removed completely but I don't see how having access to Blink Strikes and Stampede at the same time was somehow game breaking. In between this and the Burst of Speed nerf for rogues it feels like Blizzard is just being a buzzkill at this point. No fun allowed!

Comment by Schelde

Comment by Gyrwym

I hate WoWY for survival and marksman. What's is the lore behind the talent? For warlocks when they sacrifice their pet, they absorb its power and boost themselves. How does WoWY work for hunters? "Shoo, shoo, I can't attack stuff and take care of you at the same time. You are distracting and weighing me down even though you were with me the whole time till level 100."

Just make marskmanship a petless spec and think something else for the talent.

Comment by jthecrazed

Every single Marksmanship Hunter in PvE is gonna choose "Stampede" and "With or without you", I guarantee it. Unless they make pet damage better or make focusing shot castable on the move or give it higher damage. because by the time you have cast it, you will be on your focus cap especially with rapid fire up.

Same goes for survival exept for the fact that you will hit the focus cap less quickly.

A BM hunter might choose blink strike.

In PvP the choises will be different because of the lower Stampede damage in arenas and bgs and even then focusing shot will not be chosen, but flaming arrow will in PvP seem more viable

Comment by Marmo219

How come nobody talk about Improved Camouflage ! I think that's pretty strange: "No longer break from taking or dealing damage". What that mean because it's really strange. No more glyph? So you have 8s in combat of 5% heal / second? Or glyph will be there and will be like a stupid "invisible ninja" who attack you continue for some seconds and you can't hit him because you don't see him, maybe just AoE (+ the heal).

Comment by Amp412

WARNING: PVPERS POINT OF VIEW. DO NOT EXPECT RAID VIABILITY PREDICTIONS. I have 2200 experience and a long /played on my Hunter. I'm also an enthusiast for aesthetics (xmogs, spell effects, character themes, etc.) so you will see some mild personal reasoning there.

I feel like the only person who is EXTREMELY excited for the "Lone Wolf" talent. Am I really the only person who wishes WoW didn't have "Hunters" but had "Rangers"? I think this perk is going to be a must have for MM/Surv Hunters for a wide variety of reasons. Lets look.

1) I come from a background where I REALLY enjoy fast, agile, ranged combat. So a Hunter is perfect for me right? Not quite. I absolutely hate pets. They're annoying to manage and I HAVE to pick the pet that benefits me most in PvP so I basically have to go Crane every time. Cranes are not cool at all. Lol seriously? I'm far more interested in the idea of a Ranger; not-so-much a Hunter. Aside from WoW, MMOs generally run a "Ranger" or "Archer" class that does not require a pet. I have been waiting for a talent like Lone Wolf since I started playing in early BC and I think that this is Blizzards way of giving people like me the option to be a "Ranger". I think this works out perfectly because if you're interested in being a traditional WoW "Hunter" and doing your pet thing then you can go BM. It's still there. In all honesty I'm surprised a talent, perk, or spec passive like this doesn't already exist.

2) I've seen a few posts claiming that Hunter pets are roughly 20-30% of your DPS. Maybe in PvE. In PvP (as MM) I can assure you the pet is no more than 10% of my DPS and I use blink strikes (mostly because the other talents are garbage and Blink Strikes has occasional good uses; aka pet keeps up with a fleeing low HP opponent). In PvP I guarantee you there will be a significant damage increase with Lone Wolf. If you're a Surv/MM Hunter and your pet is 20-30% of your damage in PvP you are doing something very wrong. Many times your pet should be on passive; not on auto-pilot running around the map. I see that SO much. Aimed Shot auto crit on a high health player getting a MFin 30% DMG BOOST? You're crazy if you think you'll see a small damage increase with this talent. It WILL be significant. The pet serves almost entirely as utility aka Crane's RoS and Lullaby. Which brings me to my next point.

3) With pets current state I would agree that the pet utility would likely be more useful (at least in arenas) than a dmg boost. Hunters already do very good damage. Lullaby has set up so many kills for me with super long CC chains I can't even count them. A lot of people are commenting about this loss of utility with Lone Wolf but if you read the Alpha patch notes Blizz is gutting all pet CC. I think Blizz's direction with Hunters and their pets in relation to the different specs is very clear after reading they were going to remove all CC.

4) The only thing that worries me is Master's Call. It is, however, a slight worry considering Blizz taking away a lot of pet utility. I foresee a change coming to Master's Call in the near future as well.

5) Lets flip to the BM side of things for a second. I don't play BM very often; obviously after stating I hate pets. But while playing BM I don't truly feel like my pet is powerful. I feel like every so often my pet gets mad at the same time as me and we do a lot of dmg for a little and that's it. The pet isn't much different for BM as it is for MM/Surv. With the way I foresee 100, WoWY will give BM Hunters are a TRUE feeling of "beast mastery" while you and your pet are equal in deliverance; not just your pet serving as some dmg but mainly a reason for you to get extremely bursty and spam arcane shot.

Just my thoughts. Let me know what you guys think; am I really the only wanna-be Ranger?

Comment by Gryfhus

- UPDATE TI-TI-TI-TI-TIME -

Well, hello again, fellowes ! This is it ! The "info dump" is here !So, let's not waste any more time and dive right into it ! (I hope you're immune to wall of text as well xD')

Spirit Bond and Iron Hawk : Since players' health has doubled in the process, the Bond only generates 2% of your total life bar, and Iron Hawk is a passive, since Aspect of the Hawk is now gone. Nothing major here.

No more Lynx Rush, and replaced with Stampede. Kindda sad for Lynx Rush, it was a cool concept before it got nerfed.

(a.k.a "The Aspect of the AFK hunter" xD') : Well, that's horribly unbalanced, since it deals elemental damage, which is SV's trademark. I actually regret Bola Shot to this, at least that shot gave you AoE to work with.

Focusing Shot : It's basically a renamed version of Snipe, which, again (for those who read my first comment), is only viable for MM (plus it instantly procs ), and NOT for SV / BM.

Let me suggest this though; wouldn't it make more sense to have this Focusing Shot tied to Steady Shot instead ?We'd get this :

Steady Shot : Remains the same, but if you cast it while standing still, you do 100% weapon damage, and generate X extra focus.

Just sayin'.

Lone Wolf / Adaptation : Stayed quite the same, except that BM get less abilities (since is gone, among other stuff), plus Celestalon's tweets confirmed that Lone Wolf will be able to provide buff to the raid group.

So, as expected, WoWY is still going strong, but the other two talents look more like level 91 - 100 "perks" than actual talents, since they're extremely "one spec friendly", and that's not even mentioning the lack of BM's choice : why would a BM should choose something else that Versatility ?

Another important aspect is that MM and SV don't have any baseline CD anymore, meaning that they'll have to manage with the level 75 talent tier, hence the removal of Blink Strikes , which could leave a place for another cooldown.

And now, for the real meat of the news ; the new "perks".

This is how it'll work ; first I'll tackle the flat percent increase, and then we'll discover the rest. But before a spec-by-spec analysis, there's this little common perk :

l

Common to all three specs :

l

Enhanced Camouflage : A godsend. Pure and simple. But is it really supposed to fit to all three specs, now that they're different enough from each other ?

Without further ado, let's get going :

lllll

Survival :

lll

Spec tweaks :

: Gone, which means traps will no longer trigger it. Instead, it's now baked into Black Arrow, which "assures" you at least one proc of 2 instant and CD-free Explosive Shot. Since traps are getting enhanced, I guess that Black Arrow won't have a (long) CD. Looking forward to the news.

: It's now tied to Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot, and all its previous properties are staying. Not that big of deal, you'll continue to spam Arcane Shot anyway.

Explosive Trap : I quote : " Explosive Trap now places a periodic-damage effect on each target within the radius of the explosion, rather than a persistent effect on the ground". Pretty self-explanatory.

Kill Shot's removal : Now that's the weirdest of the bunch; apparently, this ability is gone, dead and simple. The team wants SV to execute a stable DPS throughout a fight, and not suddenly spam a button when its target gets below 20% health. As Celestalon tweeted, it might be a good thing : but it raises the question : with no DPS cooldown left, will SV manage to quickly pull DPS ?

Enhanced Entrapment : Now that's what we're talking about ! Basically, according to the tooltips, a 50% CD decrease should give all your traps either a 16 seconds CD, or either a 12 seconds CD (depending on their meaning of "50% less cooldown"), which is great (even greater, considering Freezing Trap will be the only hunters' baseline CC ability). The Entrapment's boost is cool too : we're FINALLY able to trap targets AND keep firing at them.

: Now that's a strange one, because the tooltips says "Camouflage no longer breaks from dealing or taking damage"; here's what I think : if you have a DoT on you, it'll hurt you but you'll still be under the aura. Understandable here.

But what happens when YOU deal damage ? Boy, is that the million dollars question. Lots of clever speculators think that when you'll start to deal damage, the "6 seconds" timer will begin, leaving you completely able to attack target during this duration, and after those 6 seconds, no more Camouflage. (Confirmer with Celestalon's tweets)

So it's just gonna act like the old version of the rogues' talent Subterfuge, but it'll last longer (6 seconds).And for those saying this perk is OP, then you clearly haven't played a SV hunter, because it's technically IMPOSSIBLE to down a player in 6 secs, since every SV ability is a DoT : this perk is just here to put SV on the same level of PVP-utility, compared to the other specs.

But it's flat out awesome. Genius, I say ! *Plays classical music*

: Your now grants you 6 focus every 3 seconds, up from 3. That's a clever way to improve SV's focus regeneration.

lll

Conclusion

Advantage : Survival finally deals about survivability.

Drawback : SV is still quite a bit dependant on haste; that Cobra Shot still has a 2 seconds cast-time, and with the team's idea to make SV a "stable DPS-spec", wouldn't it make more sense for it to be cast more often ? Hence my suggestion : reduce its cast time. Long cast times should be a MM's trademark, and since SV is going the "survivalist" road, it's just a no brainer now.

Why would we want higher damage from Cobra Shot when its goal is to ... well, give us more ressource ? Wouldn't it make more sense for it to get a lower cast time rather than a damage increase ?

lll

Sorry, but my comment is too big for Wowhead (again). So meet me in the later comment.

Comment by Gryfhus

(Be sure to read my first comment before heading to this one ^^).

Marksmanship :

lll

Spec tweaks:

No more Arcane Shot as a focus dump, it will now be Aimed Shot. Since it will be concerned by Thrill of the Hunt, and knowing that is will give you focus if it crits, it's a good design choice, but we'll have to see if its cast-time and its damage stayed the same; plus, it has been confirmed that it can be cast on the move.

: This is stuff that has been predicted by lots of people (including me by the way) : all the 40 yards shots now can be shot from 45 yards. THIS is good design, since MM will have to kite much more, in a PVP scenario, and never get damaged.

: When MS crits, it applies the DoT on all afflicted targets, kindda like Serpent Sting for SV (though not as direct and reliable, but still).

lll

Conclusion :

Advantages : MM is getting more "focus efficient" now, and the extra range is a caster premiere.

Drawback : Well, as I stated before, perhaps would it make more sense for to have the Focusing Shot tied into it, since of its very "MM-ish" feel. We'll see how it'll turn out.

Advantages : Well, BM surely is pet-sec more than ever. The Basic Attack perk reminds me of and the 100% on Beast Cleave is also nice. BM is really getting a ton of extra damage to level 100.

Drawback : DPS-wise, none. Notice that they still have, and ... yeah, BM do things with their pets, whatever. Nah, just kidding, but I'm surprised to see that Focus Fire made it through the Ability Pruning thing, and that the Arcane Shot mechanic (Cobra Strikes), that many don't seem to like, is still there. It's all opinion based after all, but I don't see the need to change them (perhaps making Focus Fire OFF the GCD would be a smart tweak).

lllll

Final Verdict :

Well, what a twist ! Survival is going "survival" and all that stuff, Marksmanship will spam that o-so nostalgic Aimed Shot while staying from afar, and Beast Master do what Beast Masters do. What do you mean, "consistency" ? In a World of Warcraft expansion ?

You get the picture : everything is going well, except for little things here and there, but we'll manage.Still freaking looking forward to this expansion. So excited !

lll

PS : I completely forgot to talk about it in my "baseline" paragraph, but the news removal of raises the question : will hunter roll with a glyphed Aspect of the Cheetah at ALL time ?

It seems pretty likely, in order to kite even more (plus the fact the glyphed version will not add another 4 secondss CD).However, since it's now on the GCD, and given the fact it gets canceled when hit, how is that supposed to enhance the kiting experience ?

It's a "trial an error" type of ability : if you manage to NOT get hit with the speed boost, then great for you, but if you does get the tiniest amount of damage, then you'll have to waste another GCD to re-apply the buff on you, and the cycle begins again.

This mechanic looks clunky as hell; why should we be so severely punished for having a speed boost in the first place ? As for Aspect of the Pack, I can get behind it, because all of your party member share it (and then it shouldn't DAZE them, but rather get canceled), but when the buff is individual, it's less understandable.

I really hope the team will consider revisiting this concept, and make it so hunters can have an actual kiting ability aside from Disengage (don't get me wrong, Disengage is awesome, but it's our only way to get distance).

Plus I don't think it's asking too much to give hunter speed, because they never had until MoP with the Posthaste talent. And yes, we have an AoE trap (Ice Trap is staying for Warlords) and Concussive Shot, but, again, they do not affect the hunter directly, just like the pet doesn't give you directly mobility, but instead keeps your target away from you (plus, with Lone Wolf, it won't be the case anymore): I honestly think it's time to consider one single speed boost for hunters, and it has something to do with Aspect of the Cheetah. I'm not asking for a flat percent increase, nor an existing ability (like Burst of Speed for Rogues), but wouldn't it be cool to have our unique mechanic in favor of that "kiting" gameplay ?

PS # 2 : Kindda curious to see how Spirit Bond and Master's Call will interact with Lone Wolf, since no one brought up the issue to the dev's.

Comment by Dracaan

Wait a second...Lone Wolf is back? Oh praise the lord! That talent is really making my hype running up high

Comment by Axmand

Comment by Nialord

does no one else feel kind of cheated by the level 100 talents? every other class is getting a cool new ability and we get some boring passives, which may boost our dps by a lot, but otherwise don't really interest me, not only that but stampede has been seriously nerfed to a level where murder of crows or blink strike outshine it 1 million times over. If they were taking out useless talents (like lynx rush) at least get rid of barrage and present us with something cool which would be as viable as Glaive toss / Power shot. After saying the thing about the level 100 talents I do have to admit flaming shots sounds like it will be a huge game changer in the way in which Hunters deal damage. But then again Hunters are one of the few classes that have no spectacular damaging abilities which other classes can be afraid of, Shammys have ele blast, Warlocks chaos bolt etc... I just pray that bliz know what they are doing and make every class seem as cool as the other rather than just introducing nerfs and buffs where required, if they want to do that they can just make a new patch, I just want to see a significant change with this new expansion I guess.

Comment by skcusefil666

not sure if it as mentioned yet...but the tooltip for says it increases kill commands damage by 20% so thinking the cobra shot one needs to be fixed

Comment by torknight

As a BM hunter I can't decide between Blink Strikes and Stampede... decisions decisions

Comment by Nijhthawk

I cannot see why they would make stampede a talent and take out lynx rush. As it stand stampede is at most the most useful in PvE while if lucky enough to get a one on fight against someone with no CC. It is not talent worthy at all. I had no problem with it being a learned spell as I didn't have to waste a talent move on it. But now they are taking out lynx rush (which I replaced blink strikes with) and putting in this. . . I just don't understand. Maybe someone could explain to me what the reason is.

However, I still think it is wasted talent slot and if I had to guess most hunters (including PvE) won't be choosing it over blink strikes. To be honest murder of crows is pretty worthless as it stands as well. (I speak for myself, and from experience of having on me and it not doing any dps aside from being annoying)

Comment by scourge2

For Beast Mastery it seems they will all be taking Versatility hands down and MM hunters might like spamming Aimed Shot and Focsuing Shot. SV gets screwed because if you grab Lone Wolf from what I understand, you don't have a pet so thus you don't get the healing from Spirit Bond because that requires your pet to be out to get the healing-Lone Wolf only works without a pet. Focusing Shot gives WAAAAY too much focus, you can't even move, and what about the reapplying of Serpent Sting? If I want 50 focus AND still move I would have simply just grabbed the talent Fervor. Since Spirit Bond is the only real form of consistent healing for SV hunters, I'm not gonna take Lone Wolf; I don't want a standing 50 focus return Focusing Shot, and thus leaves me with the only talent remaining: Flaming Shots. Nothing against Flaming Shots, but for talent selecting purposes I feel really limited.

As for Kill Shot, in my opinion, if it's gonna be removed than remove it from BM and give it back to SV. A BM hunter to me is a master of their pets/beasts-not a master of shots.

Comment by scourge2

Cookie Cutter Build Much?Tier 15 has a variety of choice.Tier 30 ALL specs mainly pick Binding Shot and Wyvern Sting. Intimidation (pvp and pve sets alike) is picked only 8.04% of the time over the other talents.Tier 45 ALL specs mainly pick Spirit Bond and Aspect of the Iron Hawk. Exhilaration (pvp and pve sets alike) is picked only 1.44% of the time over the other talents.Tier 60 ALL specs mainly pick Thrill of the Hunt and Dire Beast. Fervor (pvp and pve sets alike) is picked only 15.37% of the time over the other talents.Tier 75 ALL specs mainly pick Blink Strikes and A Murder of Crows. Lynx Rush (pvp and pve sets alike) is picked only 2% of the time over the other talents.Tier 90 is ridiculous ALL specs (pvp and pve sets alike) pick Glaive Toss 90.71% of the time over the other talents.Tier 100 will be interesting to see what will happen on live.

Comment by punkmonk

Blink Strikes + Versatility.... unfff

Comment by cerblade

So I do not think these talents really benefit Survival hunters all that much. First off Flaming Shots only makes 80% of our weapon damage as fire damage, which will boost dps slightly depending on how much mastery one has. If one has lets say 10% mastery then you will be doing only 8% more damage on auto-attacks only. Which currently auto-attacks account for around 20-25% of damage. This will effectively add 2% damage increase if your auto-attacks are doing 25% of your damage and you have 10% mastery.

Secondly, Focusing Shot will not be an option in my book, since it will take away mobility along with taking 3 seconds to cast and dealing around the same dps as Cobra shot would for a survival hunter depending on their mastery percentage. Cobra Shot can even beat Focusing Shot in dps with more than 20% mastery if one ever gets to that level, though to be fair the extra focus would put this ability ahead, but I view this as more of a MM talent than anything.

Thirdly, Lone Wolf seems like a nice deal, because you get a 30% increase in your damage for losing your pet and you can get a beneficial buff too. If your pet does over 23% of our damage though, which mine can tend to do even now, you will be losing dps by choosing this talent. Especially with all of the removal of abilities I think it is more likely the pet will do a little bit more of the overall damage. Though this talent I would say would be have to be tested to see if, with the removal of abilities, it is worth grabbing.

These talents don't seem as great as some of the other talents that Blizzard has released, such as the Arcane Orb for mages and the Seraphim talent for Paladins. Though I am still hoping some things change in Alpha and Beta to make these seem more appealing to me than they do currently now and loving the garrisons idea and can't wait for WoD to come out.

Comment by RedEnigma

Is Lone Wolf supposed to be like Grimoire of Sacrifice? If so, will it play well Spirit Bond, Blink Strikes, and Kill Command?

Comment by Suej

Has anyone else realized that with the removal of Rapid Fire and Stampede becoming a talent, Hunters do not have any burst CD anymore? (not to mention the the engineering burst wchich matched Rapid Fire awesomely is also gone)

Comment by Durua

Flaming shots. Awesome! :D

Comment by Johnnywinwin

So with flaming shot, survival can actually use their mastery?

Comment by Masterminded

The least changed talent tree of all classes. I was hoping for some ultimate-like combo strike with your pet, or ability to tame dragonkins, or m8be a new aspect some dragon or other animal. C'mon, make lvl 100 talents like it is a Master Level.

Comment by Kaerfemagsh

so flaming shots + marksmanship mastery =... ?

Comment by Delyser

I hate ponys

Comment by Thecapricorn

Although pets are the most important reason that I had started playing WoW as a hunter years ago, yet after experiencing a hunter's job on fights like Siegecrafter Blackfuse in Siege of Orgrimmar, I do believe you should have kept the ability to play without them, while empowering the character itself somehow.

Comment by Axmand

Exotic Munitions, nice talent but BM and SV hunters probably dont going to use Poisoned Ammo, because they already have Serpent Sting, unless you want more DOT, yet Poisoned Ammo, is the best for Single-Target, hope can we apply multi "poison debuff".

Incediary Ammo seems to be the best AOE; no focus cost and "passive" AOE, i mean because it triggers via autoshots.

And Frost Ammo... well PvP...

Comment by rdelissen

Exotic MunitionsThis talent gives Hunters a choice between 3 different 1-hour during buffs. Looks like the Hunter version of the Rogues poison ability.Incendiary AmmoUseful for downing mutiple mobs at the same time (i.e. trash packs in dungeons).Poisoned AmmoThis will be the 'ammo' to use in the longer (boss)fights. Or maybe versus casters in PvP.Frozen AmmoProbably the 'ammo' to use in a shorter fights or a PvP atmosphere (i.e. versus melee).

Conclusion: very situational talent, but SV Hunters seem to profit most of this talent thanks to their Mastery. With Concussive Barrage (daze effect from Chimaera Shot) gone, MM Hunters might like the Frozen Ammo part of this talent, so your attacks still daze/slow your target. This ability will probably have a cast time, just like the Rogues poisons.

Focusing Shot (replaces Cobra/Steady Shot).Let's compare this ability to the Cobra or Steady shots in Alpha.Focusing Shot:+ Gives 36 more focus+ Does 65% more (weapon) dmg.- Takes ~1 sec longer to cast.- Cannot be cast while you're on the move.

Conclusion: while using this talent you will lose a great deal of mobility. The spec that will benefit most of this talent seems to be MM because Blizzard said it triggers Steady Focus. MM will also be the only spec with Rapid Fire, which increases haste and thus reduces casttime. This talent won't be as usefull for SV Hunters, because they will prefer a Cobra Shot for the magical dmg (and they might still need it for Serpent Sting upkeep). While BM Hunters might prefer Adaption over this talent.

Adaption / Lone WolfThis talent changes on your current spec, BM Hunters get Adaption while MM/SV Hunters get Lone Wolf.VersatilityIncreases your pets dmg (by roughly 33%) and also increases it's survivability. Lone WolfIncreases your dmg by 30% when your pet is dismissed. You will also get to choose one of the many raidbuffs available.

Conclusion: Adaption seems to be a 'must have' for BM Hunters atm. It gives more sustained pet dmg and decreases the chance for your pet to die (which would mean a great loss of dmg). Lone Wolf might not be as good as it sounds, because it will exchange alot utility for just some raw dmg. On the other hand you'll also lose some dmg for not having a pet out. Getting a buff of your own choosing sounds like a nice benefit though. It looks like you don't have to be a BM Hunter anymore to bring a nice buff to the raid (and you don't need the necessary pet management).

Comment by scourge2

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to me the level 100 talents make me feel like I don't have a choice and they might as well just be tied to a specialization.Rdelissen pretty much summed it up in their following 3 conclusions:

"Conclusion: (Exotic Munitions) ...SV Hunters seem to profit most of this talent thanks to their Mastery...

Conclusion: ...The spec that will benefit most of (Focusing Shot) seems to be MM...

Conclusion: Versatility seems to be a 'must have' for BM Hunters atm..."

Comment by Spitzio

Since cc is being nerfed next expac Narrow Escape needs to be replaced with something else. With the cooldown of disengage being reduced due to readiness the kiting abilities of hunters on melee will be too great. If anything it needs to be moved to the cc talent row like the rest of the classes and replace intimidation because it sucks. They could replace it on the top row with a talent that allows disengage to be used while stunned, prevents stuns from stopping disengage, and pop a little parachute out to increase distance and allow hunters to float to the ground, that would be a cool and useful talent, but the rooting and bind shotting has to stop.

Comment by Ty52

I SO want to take Lone Wolf as the last talent but sadly I see Exotic Munitions as one of those 'required' talents to have stable DPS *sigh*

Comment by ice0

not a major concern but where is the glyph of misdirection? this glyph appear on the normal 90 talent calculator but not in the WoD calculator. is it a bug? or blizz just removed it?

Comment by SquidID

Has anyone noticed that Survival has and Enhanced Camouflage? Are survival hunters just going to be permanently healing monsters, immune to ranged attacks? I don't understand how Camo that doesn't break is balanced.

Comment by LordBloodmourne

Why frozen ammunition... hunters dont need a slow for pvp at all.... please blizz either get only give stampede to beast mastery or put it in the 100 talent slot so they have to choose. Hunters are already the most mobile class in arenas.

Comment by bluemewgoddess

so since they removed arcane shot from marksman now when i roll a hunter i go survival with improved arcane shot so i can take versatility and thrill of the hunt to spam arcane shot with sting built into it? good glad they haven't removed that i really need a 1 button rotation otherwise ill have to pick something other than a huntard to reroll too

Comment by AjronMen

To be honest... 1st (left) talent is changing from time to time, so i will skip it for now... but current version is similar to rgoue's poisons, quite nice. With "wild quiver" on MM it might get quite nice.2nd is bigest thorn in the a... archers. For MM it seems great, with high focus costs and increse ma focus it will help MM maintain decent dps, even without Arcane Arrow - more about it in the end... BUT, yeah always there is a but(t)... it will stop hunter in ONE PLACE. We will be completly immoblized for deadly 3 seconds or will be forced to cast-breaks and break our combos -> drop our dps... quite pain. Mobility, it's big trade off, meaby too big. With modiffied thrill of te hunt that will give us free casts of aimed shot some-times and cobra refreshing stings that 2nd 100-talent dosent seem this great, especialy if will need use it 2 times in a row to gest haste buff (MM). Reducing cast time wont help, but giving back our mobility with it might make it obvious for MMs. Blizzard is making hard traeoff here...and 3rd... Yeah, makeing few previous talents pintles, but... giving more love to the others, makeing hunters to count on their healers to heal them when our little constan heal from spirit bond faded, but 10% dmg reduction is up.

For solo pve runs on maps similar to timless i would pick eoti ammo to keep my mobility and spirit bond, but for raids... i would think about others 2 - both got pros in those situations.

Comment by bluemewgoddess

survival 3 1 2 3 3 3 3, spam arcane shot when black arrow is on cd and very rarely use cobra shot to regin focus if you get a bad string of procs and gg? arcane shot and black arrow are buffed, explosive shot is not, BM needs a pet and MM doesnt have arcane shot so will this be a valid rotation?

Comment by Tyerr

Exotic Munitions looks interesting o.o

Comment by Heimsteak

I rather like the look of exotic munitions, actually. Poison itself is very interesting.Its a boost with a cap, and an interesting process behind it. Lets say you do 400 damage per auto with a 2.0 AS weapon and no attack speed boosts. With exotic munition - poison, you'll add an additional 800 damage over 16 seconds, or 50dps. Attack again after 2 seconds, and you'll add on another 800 to the remaining 700 for 1500 damage over 16 seconds.

At first its daunting, but then you realize the returns grow with the investment. Now you're doing 94dps per second, sounds solid. Shoot again, and the 800 gets added to the 1312 remaining, growing it to about 2112 over 16. 132dps, a very decent dot doing about 1/4 of your total normal dps in addition. Add 800 to the 1848 and you now have 2648.

While the numbers seem to be doing better, and they are, your gain is slowly decreasing. Before, it was a flat 700. Then it dropped to 612, and then again to 532. The gain will eventually halt when the dps from the poison matches your normal dps, as your shots will no longer yield any net gain from the attack speed you possess.

Now lets say you pop something like Rapid Fire as a sort of mini-cooldown. All of a sudden, your attacks are firing off a lot faster, and the DoT will stack a lot higher because you are no longer losing damage to the tick. Your attack speed gets up to 1.2, and now instead of losing say... 100dps on that first tick, you only lose 50. The numbers add up quickly, as you can imagine. I think if I get a hunter in WoD, I'm definitely going for this talent.

Comment by Axmand

I hope the new MM Mastery allow us to move a little before lost the buff...

--EDIT---

Sorry i didnt notice about the 5 seconds, so if we move for 2-3 seconds, we should have enough time to gain the buff again...

Comment by Smashhits

Been playing Hunter since BC. Looking forward to the new challenge! :D

Comment by azzeria

Exotic Munitions - Frozen Ammo!

I am looking forward to using this in PvP, it seems it can mighty handy. I just wonder if it cancels out the slow effects of frost trap, or just enhances it.....

Comment by MoonChild94

I am so worried about my hunter come WOD, I really hope that they don't change too much about them. My hunter has been my main for years and I would hate for everything about her to change /: Honestly as long as BM pretty much stays BM I will be okay with any changes made to the Hunters as a class.

Comment by Xdflames

I really do not like the idea of the new level 100 talent Lone Wolf, for Survival and Marskmanship Hunters. The whole point of being a Hunter is to be able to have a pet and have it help you through questing, raiding or PvP. I felt the exact same way with Grimoire of Sacrifice for Warlocks.

I'm really not sure why Blizzard is insistent on getting rid of the major thing that makes these two classes unique.

Comment by Azandy

omg Blizzard please change Marksmanship hunters.... This is complete #$%^. Why did you change the Mastery to make it to where you have to stand still to get better damage off? That's absolutely stupid. When I think of Marksmanship, I think of complete precision and accuracy with a long ranged weapon no matter what the situation is. If we're standing still, sure we should be able to get more accurate shots but if you're a master marksman shouldn't that mean you're able to hit stuff with perfect accuracy from any distance while moving? Wild Quiver is way better, especially with the change where you're taking out Serpent Sting for Marksmanship and Beast Mastery. I understand it but come on, really? You're giving us a focus dump that takes 2.5 secs to cast and you're encouraging us to stand still. I think we at least deserve some sort of DoT ability to go off while we're taking so long to actually do some damage. This needs to be changed soon otherwise no one will play Marksmanship. The fact that we have to stand still to get better damage is bad enough in certain PvE situations but PvP? No way in hell is that viable.

Comment by bullettimeman

ugh, I hope these changes will be good for hunters. Otherwise, they will completely destroy us.

Comment by Shadowbison

Really looking forward to the lvl 100 Talent.

Comment by Axmand

I wonder, if i shot the Chimaera Shot to a single target, the "2 shots" will trigger and affect that single target?

Comment by Pakkala

Hunter Talent Changes: The hunter talents for tier 5 are pretty tasteless; wouldn’t it be nice if we brought some more skill into the hunter class with positional bonuses? Also an idea for the survival spec cooldown.

Tier 5 (75): (Positioning) A Murder of Crows > Overdraw: Your next special attack deals 30% more damage but has a 20 yard min range for the next cast. 15 sec cooldown. This spell is off the GCD.

Blink Strikes > Ease of Mind: Special attacks made from more than 20 yards away, gain 10% increased mastery, crit, multistrike, or haste; whichever is highest.

Stampede > Defenseless: Special attacks made from behind the target deal 20% increased damage. (Does not work on bosses). Attacks made from Camouflage will proc this effect. -----Survival DPS cooldown: Expedite: Your damage over time effects deal their damage at three times their normal rate for 15 seconds. Black arrow’s Resource cost is removed, and cooldown is reduced to 6 seconds for this duration. 1.5 min cooldown.

Comment by Axmand

Aspect of the Fox is a new ability for all Hunters.

Aspect of the Fox: Party and raid members within 40 yards take on the aspects of a fox, allowing them to move while casting all spells for 6 seconds. Only one Aspect can be active at a time. 3 minute cooldown.

I can almost hear the insults coming from the players that told you to activate the skill in "x" situation and you didnt because you forget xD...

Comment by jtj11251994

Did anyone else notice that now BM will have to choose between Blink Strikes and Stampede at 75? Would the Adaptation talent stack with these abilities?

Comment by Axmand

Lone Wolf now only increases damage of Auto Shot, Arcane Shot, Cobra Shot, Black Arrow, and Explosive Shot, rather than all damage.

With this, this talent become "a mandatory" choice for Survival Hunters, i suppose the MM can choose between Focusing Shot and Exotic Munitions.

--EDIT--

Sorry i just notice that the talent will change depending of the spec...

Comment by rowva

Why BM hunters keeping cobra shot when they no longer have serpent sting. If they are wanting to removing useless spells that is one of them.

Comment by Kaerfemagsh

some1 just told they're thinking of giving hunters a 'tank' spec in wod...

Comment by vnedelcu

concussive shot should have a 30 second cd, not a 5 second cd and a 6 second duration. all hunters abuse this spell and it's very annoying, especially because it has 40 yd range. for example, i'm in wsg and i want to go and pick up the flag, but i can't because a stupid hunter uses that shot and catch me. so it should have a cd so i can run after its duration expires or it should have a focus cost, so that the hunter will deal less dmg because he consumes focus on his slowing shot. annoying is also that the hunter can use disengage whenever he wants (no matter if he's in combat or not), and this spell combined with posthaste..... well, i think that you realise that the hunter will catch someone that is very far from him (the hunter could cath someone that is at the distance of 80 yds! or even more if he uses his concussive shot)and about spirit bond, its healing sould be reduced, especially because it is free. the only thing you have to do is to keep your pet alive.

Comment by vnedelcu

if the hunter can slow and also attack his target from 40 yds... then how the hell will mele classes catch him? warrior's charge has a 25 yds range, so it is not enough to cath the hunter. and also, dk's death grip is not enough to cath the hunter if it has a 30 yds range. and about the paladin.. i don't know what to say..poor paladin

Comment by boneshooter

i cant believe i will have to play another expansion with the EXACT SAME TALENTS from this expansion.. come on blizzard

Comment by Voltindarkchaos

exotic munitions really interest me the most out of all the level 100 talents.though not really sure how well it would work with a BM hunter.

Comment by Kaerfemagsh

Comment by Soraryuu

Normally I'd agree that Focusing Shot for MM is rather lackluster, but since the new change to MM's Mastery Mastery: Sniper Training, I think it may be pretty good. I can see a MM going for a crit mastery setup and just lobbing tons of damage without even having to move that often at all. Plus you can stand still for a FS, grant the proc and still move around for 6 seconds, dealing the increased dmg, crit dmg and having that increased shot range. In PVE, you don't have to move THAT much where you are running laps around the raid doing your damage. I think Blizzard's intent for MM is to be that spec that obviously excels at the long range and can do it's damage just fine if not better by standing still. They are the Snipers of WoW in Blizzard's eyes. I'm looking forward to playing MM in PVE if that becomes a thing (Which I really hope it does). Just...bring back piercing shots please lol. I don't see it on the spec list :(.

Comment by Mfleming92

Okay, so the talent "Lone Wolf" for the marksmanship spec is confusing me right now... It's saying that Arcane shot, auto shot, black arrow, and explosive shot damage is increased without a pet active. But, on the battle.net patch notes it's saying that MM hunters do not get arcane shot anymore? So, what's the point in giving us a talent that looks like it only benefits a survival hunter way more? I mean it would make more sense if you chose the MM spec, then the lone wolf talent would change with that spec. Like lets say you wanna be MM..the lone wold talent should increase the damage done by Chimera shot, aimed shot, auto shot, and steady shot by 30%. I'm just confused, this makes no sense..

Here's the webpage where it says MM hunters no longer have arcane shot.

Maybe I read it wrong, but just click on hunters and it'll be like the first thing mentioned.

Comment by Serothi

While the lvl 100 talents are nice, I don't know why they're penalizing hunters with lone wolf. Seriously, warlocks have no penalty with grimoire of sacrifice, but hunters do the same thing and oh no, now you can't use 1/4 of your talent tree, all because you didn't want to have a pet to do stupid things like run around and aggro a whole room.

I hope all the ones that break get some kind of switch for MM and SV. and iron hawk is just sad. The most boring talent in the tree. Useful, don't get me wrong, but so so soooo boring.

"Reduces damage by 10%"

I hope some of these get reworked or something. I mean compare it to say the Mage and the warrior talent trees, you'll see what I mean. It leads me to wonder... But hey, maybe they're saving the best for last, but I somehow doubt it...

Comment by Luih

Isn't Arcane shot going to be use for BM only? If so, wouldn't they have to fix Thrill of the Hunt?

Comment by rdelissen

I'm absolutely thrilled about Adaption for BM and Lone Wolf for MM/SV

And on top of that we get Exotic Munitions, which sounds quite nice on paper.

Comment by Tubbers

I'm not going to lie, the BM perks are incredibly sub-par compared to the other specs.

Comment by Rikion99

I like the exoctic munitions since I used to play Roque. It might bring back fond memories. Mixing it up to confuse the enemy. The long casts on shots have never seemed to work for me but I'm excited to try focusing shot. Lone wolf looks like my second choice to exotic Munitions.

Comment by Arnastrasz

Comment by Dragonzero

15- Posthaste or Narrow Escape: Posthaste help ya run to LoS fast as defense play style then heal some. NE help to do aoe webs then throw freeze trap afterward.30- Binding Shot or Wyvern Sting: BS go for the BG to do aoe stun, WS go for arena to CC the healer or spot stealther(warning Dot break it).45- Iron Hawk or Spirit Bond: Iron Hawk go for arena with your healer as partner, Spirit Bond go for BG and Arena(without healer).60- Steady Focus or TotH: I feel Steady Focus is better than TotH and because ya don't need to spamming the Arcane Shot.75- AMoC or Blink Strike: either ya like and to me is BS for keep my pet stay on current target and no running.90- Glaive Toss or Powershot: Powershot is dependable on the BG and Arena with No Escape Glyph that replace Explosive Trap Glyph and also must have pocket Healer. Glaive Toss is the Best for the rest of the BG and Arena.100- Exotic Munitions: No Fire Arrow because it aoe, Poison Arrow go for against plate wearers and casters, Frozen Arrow go for against Rogue and Druid that have snare remover abilities. NO Lone Wolf because of no RoS and M.Call to save ya. Enemies know that you have Lone Wolf then it will kill you 1st and focus on ya. So EM is Better!

Glyph

MajorAnimal BondExplosive Trap or No EscapeSolace is must have for remove the DoTs from the Freeze Trap.

MinorRevive PetAspect of the Cheetahany

SV is going to be strong that can beat casters and some warriors. Problem is no Kill Shot/Dps CD, it made them have hard time to kill the targets and then re-over again. Because SV got Sustain Damage and enemies can heal back up to half or full hp as dps spec. Black Arrow is buffed increase dmg and have dispel protection that made healer gone to flip the tables for low on mana. SV's Traps CD is reduce by 50% by perk and BM/MM don't have that.

So...Arcane Shot applied Serpent Sting by passive and that sound ain't right for the name to Arcane Shot. It could combine to Venom Shot and change anime or change color of AS's anime to venom green. Simple to choose MM get keep Steady Shot and BM/SV get Cobra Shot that replace StS. So, choose SV then Venom Shot replace to the Arcane Shot and BM keep the Arcane Shot. That is way better to understand what is SV made of for that used Deadly Weapons.

Best pet with SV is Snare or MS debuff abilities. Their few pets have Snare abilities, it help you know which way are they walk to and then you can throw traps to front, left or right about 3-5yrds away from the enemies. Because hunter and pet are split gcd that you can macros this pet's snare and ready traps. Ya can try do yourself with Concussive Shot then throw traps without pet's snare and then can use few pets that have MS debuffs. All pets must have Cunning spec along with SV and because of the RoS/Master's Call that must have for the pvp.

IMO of TheoryI love SV for many years since TBC to MoP for the PvP, then now on WoD that SV/MM got gutted harder to the bottom than BM and BM still on top but nerfed on BW to made pets break enemies' CC only and not hunter. BM have 2 cds, MM got 1 and what SV get? NONE FOR SV ON WOD? Also the Kill Shot need change to no reset cd and raise the cd.

I don't like BM, BM, BM, BM for the PvP on whole expansions and it need change. Because a lot of Pro Players that want to play top spec and then started to get tired and bored to BM pvp then to unsub the WoW. That why Blizz never change spec for the top spec and want BM hunter, Arm war, Frost mage and etc to stay on whole expansions for the PvP. I have noticed Druid changing for Feral or Balance many times for the PvP, Rogue too for Assassin or Subt, Priest too for Disc or Shadow, and so on few other...but Hunter stay 1 on WoD is BM again. MM on WoD is no good for pvp because of the line of sight to the Aimed Shot, turn Chimera Shot to cleave shot that call Chimaera Shot and no healing.

So revert the Kill Shot to the SV, make new Dps CD for the SV and that are the 2nd best PvP spec for Hunter. Then they can chose BM or SV. If they don't revert the Kill Shot and make new Dps CD...ya know what I going to do is? Retired then quit played WoW, Unsub or play different class.

Comment by francoaventine

MM Lone Wolf Opener?

Freezing Trap with Freezing Trap Glyph and No Escape Glyph. Launch it the additional range yardage into the doorway of a AV tower. Use Camouflage, put explosive trap with knickknack gliph at your feet and wait....

Your prey hits trap and turns to a block of ice. You have gained Sniper Buff as you were standing there. Then....

Comment by Kaerfemagsh

instead of having 2 action bar spaces for cobra & steady shot, they should have for bm & survival a passive that makes steady shot do nature dmg

Comment by Menardis

I said it before in the beta version but Lone Wolf... man. A hundred levels of

BIG

trusting

doleful

watery

innocent

loyal

pet eyes

and then telling them to go away is a cruel talent to place at the end. I'm also really kind of looking for something to give Survival extra depth at 100. It misses so much compared to bm and mm it's not even funny. It went from being the most engaging spec I played over the years to the one that is the most boring and slow, bah. I felt so disappointed when I respecced to BM and realised I had more things to do and keep track off -_-